Journal of early southern decorative arts [serial]

J ) \

JOURNAL

of

EARLY SOUTHERN
DECORATIVE ARTS

May, 1989

Volume XV, Number 1

The Museum of Early Southern

Decorative Arts

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JOURNAL
of

EARLY SOUTHERN

DECORATIVE ARTS

May, 1989

Volume XV, Number 1

Published twice yearly in

May and November by

The Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts

L!BP>

-x^AflD-.-O !? innn

Copyright © 1989 Old Salem, Inc.
Winston-Salem, North Carolina 27108

Printed by Hall Printing Company
High Point, North Carolina

Contents

Editor's preface iv

The History of the CupoLi House, 1724-1777 1

Bruce S. Cheeseman

The Cupola House:

An Anachronism of Style and Technology 57

John Bivins,

James Melchor,

Marilyn Melchor,

Richard Parsons

111

Editor's preface.

With the occasional exception of room interiors, architecture
is seldom included in published studies on the decorative arts.
This hiatus can detract from the full interpretation of early material
culture. Architecture provides us with a benchmark in taking
measure of the origin and use of movables that filled dwellings,
for houses normally are fixed upon their construction sites.
Buildings do not migrate about like furniture, and they usually
retain a good deal more solid documentation than any
''movable. "

The Cupola House in Edenton, North Carolina, possesses a
number of attributes important to the Museum of Early Southern
Decorative Arts. Foremost in these is the building 's uniqueness
in the southeast. However, the house long has been surrounded
by controversy among the ranks of architectural historians,
decorative arts historians, and historiographers. A puzzling legacy
concerning the exceptional interiors of the dwelling has centered
upon Francis Corbin, the agent of Lord Granville, who purchased
the house in the 1730s. Certain well-considered evidence has
suggested that Corbin could have added the elaborate interior
finish to every room of the house during 1736-38, yet the
execution and early style of these important rooms have appeared
to contradict so late an installation. This puzzle has lent conjec-
ture to the public interpretation of North Carolina V most signifi-
cant early dwelling.

This issue of the Journal is devoted to a historical, architec-
tural, and physical examination of this exceptional southern house
with the intent of documenting the precise nature of the Cupola
House as it was built, as it stood in Corbin 'j" time, and as it remains
today. For this purpose, Bruce S. Cheeseman, Elizabeth Vann
Moore, James Melchor, Marilyn Melchor, Catherine Bishir, Richard
Parsons, and Betsy Overton have Joined the Journal staff in pre-
paring this two-part study. Mr. Cheeseman compiled his Cupola
House research for the Division of Archives and History, North
Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, in 1980; Miss Moore,
as Mr. Cheeseman notes, previously had carried out extensive
research on the property herself. A substantial portion of
Cheeseman j research dealing with the history of the Cupola
House after the Corbin residency was published as ''The Survival
of the Cupola House: 'A Venerable Old Mansion '''in the January
1986 issue of The North Carolina Historical Review, and we invite
those of our readers interested in the later history of the house

iv MESDA

to peruse that useful article. W^e offer our special thanks to the
Division of Archives and History for their kind permission to
publish the balance of Mr. Cheeseman's work, which we have
entitled ''The History of the Cupola House, 1724-1777. "

The second part of this study, "The Cupola House: An
Anachronism of Style and Technology, ' ' was written by the editor,
based on the observations of all of the survey team, as well as
written reports by James and Marilyn Melchor and Richard
Parsons. Only those who submitted written material are included
in the byline of this article, but that does not diminish the
importance of the interaction of all the individuals involved.

Elizabeth Vann Moore compiled an extensive listing of eigh-
teenth century property transactions in Edenton specifically for
this study. Forsyth Alexander, in addition to other research,
examined a large sampling of architectural sources, both ancient
and modern. Other individuals and organizations who have been
most helpful are Olivia Alison of Newark, Delaware; Richard
Candee of York, Maine; Abbot Lowell Cummings of New Haven,
Connecticut; the Cupola House Association; Patricia Gibbs of
the Department of Research, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation;
the staff of Historic Bath State Historic Site; the staff of Historic
Edenton, Inc.; Jeanne Hull of Norfolk, Virginia; John Ingram,
Curator, Special Collections, Colonial W^illiamsburg Foundation;
Mills Lane of Beehive Press in Savannah; Jai Jordan,
Administrator, Hope Plantation, Windsor North Carolina; Betty
Leviner, Curator of Exhibition Buildings, Colonial Williamsburg
Foundation; Audrey Michie, Curator of Collections, Tryon Palace,
New Bern, North Carolina; Peter Sandbeck of the Preservation
Branch of the Division of Archives and History, Raleigh; Kevin
Stayton, Curator of the Department of Decorative Arts, the
Brooklyn Museum and Wesley Stewart of MESDA.

May, 1989

Figure 1 . The Cupola House from the southeast, MESDA research file (MRF)
S- 13,630; all of the Cupola House photographs are by the editor except as noted,
and all carry the research file number above.

VI

MESDA

The History of the Cupola House, 1724-1777
Bruce S. Cheeseman

The Cupola House (fig. 1) of Edenton is one of the most archi-
tecturally significant structures in North Carolina.' Located in
North Carolina's third oldest incorporated town, the house is one
of the few surviving in the state that may be dated before the
mid-eighteenth century. Once the townhouse of Lord Granville's
principal agent, Francis Corbin, the Cupola House served as a
private residence until 1918, when its last occupant sold much
of the first floor interior woodwork to the Brooklyn Museum of
Fine Arts. Facing demolition, the house was saved that year by
the formation of the Cupola House Association, the earliest known
community-organized agency specifically established for the
preservation of a historical structure in North Carolina.^ The
Cupola House then was repaired and converted into a town library
and museum, and the structure served in that capacity until its
restoration in the mid-1960s. This undoubtedly is one of the
earliest examples of an adaptive use preservation in the state.

Spurred by the initiative and leadership of the late David M.
Warren of Edenton, the Cupola House Association, with the
guidance of the state's Division of Archives and History and the
cooperation of the Brooklyn Museum, authentically restored the
structure in a period of over twenty months during 1964-66. Its
missing woodwork was painstakingly reproduced under the direc-
tion of W. M. Kemp of Hertford, North Carolina.^ Further
restoration and interpretation of the structure and site has also
continued under the auspices of the Cupola House Association,
Historic Edenton, Inc., and the state Division of Arhcives and
History. The formal and kitchen gardens of the homesite were
reconstructed in the early 1970s under the supervision of land-
scape architect Donald H. Parker of Williamsburg, Virginia. C.
J. Sauthier's 1769 Plan of Edenton (fig. 3), which clearly depicts
the Cupola House and its lot, served as the basis for the garden
reconstruction."*

May, 1989

Figure 2. A detail from Henry Mouzon. An Accurate Map of North and South Carolina. London:
Sayer and Bennet. my M.ESDA accession 3024-3-

The Chowan vicinity of Edenton Bay and Pembroke and
Queen Anne's creeks was explored and settled long before the
1712 establishment of what is today the town of Edenton. Indeed,
exploration of the region dates to the famed Roanoke voyages
of 1584-90, the very beginning of English colonization of the New
World. ^ Further exploration of the Chowan region followed the
establishment of the Jamestown colony in 1607, the adventurers
often returning with glowing accounts of fertile bottom lands and
vast timber forests.^ The region itself was included in the Virginia
Charter of 1606, and it was referred to in the seventeenth century
as "Ould Virginia," "South Virginia," "New Brittaine," and
even ' 'North Florida. ' ' It was in this context, as Virginia's southern
frontier, that the Chowan Region initially was settled in the
seventeenth century.^

In the mid- 1650s colonists, primarily from Virginia and
Maryland, began moving south into the Chowan and other regions
north of Albemarle Sound, settling at first along the fertile river
bottoms and sound inlets. By 1662 the population of the
Albemarle Region exceeded five hundred individuals, and the

MESDA

Virginia Council later that year commissioned Captain Samuel
Stevens as "commander" of the region, which it called the
"Southern Plantation. "« On 24 March 1663, the Albemarle
section became part of the newly chartered Carolina Proprietary,
and settlement of the region progressed slowly under the govern-
mental policies of the Carolina Lords Proprietors. Albemarle
County was established in 1664 as the ruling governmental unit
for the entire sound region, and a legislative and court system
was established the following year (1665) under the auspices of
Albemarle's first governor, William Drummond.^ At that time,
present-day Chowan County was a portion of Albemarle County,
organized for administrative reasons as Albemarle's "Shaftesbury
Precmct" around 1668.'° The area was settled amidst the
confusion, unrest, disorder, slow growth, and even armed

Figure _•?. A detail of the Plan of the Town & Port of Edenton in Chowan County, manuscript
map by C.J. Sauthter, June. 1769. By permission of the Bntish Library, London. The Cupola House
and garden lots are directly above the center wharf marked "H, " as indicated by the arrow.

May, 1989

rebellion of late-seventeenth-century Albemarle County. The
region was renamed "Chowan Precinct" around 1685, honor-
ing both the friendly Chowanoc Indians and the Chowan River.
By the beginning of the eighteenth century, the region was being
settled rapidly as the Carolina frontier pushed westward across
the Chowan River to Bertie and Hertford counties and southward
across Albemarle Sound into the Pamlico region."

Surviving seventeenth-century land records indicate that
numerous families settled upon the fertile lands surrounding
Edenton Bay and Pembroke and Queen Anne's creeks during
Chowan's intitial settlement. '^ Many plantations, several of them
quite large, were established in the vicinity, undoubtedly because
of its easy access to navigable waters. The land Edenton now stands
upon originally was part of a 1,000 acre tract owned by a Virginia
planter named Thomas Hoskins, who held title to the land by
right of a Virginia land patent.'-' Hoskins established a large plan-
tation along Queen Anne's Creek just east of the present town
site, and he renewed his title to the land around 1680 by right
of a Carolina land patent. Soon afterward Hoskins sold a small
tract of his land containing approximately 150 acres in "the fork
of Queen Anne's Creek" (including the present town site) to a
farmer named Hancock.'^ Passing through a succession of indi-
viduals, the tract was purchased by Nathaniel Chevin, its sixth
owner, in 1699; he was one of the most prominent planters in
the Carolina Province at that time.'^ Eight years later, on 3
October 1707, Chevin sold a part of the tract to Colonel Thomas
Cary, later of Cary Rebellion fame, who in turn sold the land
to merchant Thomas Peterson on 26 June 1710.'^

During the early years of the eighteenth century, the admin-
istrative duties of the precinct of Chowan, as of the Carolina
Province in general, increased proportionally with its population.
Despite having been settled for some fifty years, Chowan and
the other precincts north of Albemarle Sound possessed neither
a town nor a village to handle functions such as the collection
of taxes and customs and the registration of lands and deeds.
Sessions of court and other precinct responsibilities were carried
out at regular meetings held at various farmers' plantation houses.
This was a great inconvenience and annoyance to both province
officials and settlers alike, who often had to travel long distances
over hazardous roads to attend a session of court. Finally, in 1712
the General Assembly voted to establish a town upon the 100
acre tract jointly owned by Thomas Peterson and Nathaniel

4 MESDA

Chevin, who apparently had offered the land to the assembly
for such a purpose.'^

The land Edenton stands upon probably was cultivated and
farmed to a certain extent during the late seventeenth and early
eighteenth centuries, as its owners all resided in the immediate
vicinity. As early as 1699 "houses" were recorded on the tract.
Thomas Peterson's dwelling stood west of present Granville Street
in the vicinity of Queen and Water streets.'^ Also, mariner
Abraham Lewis of Currituck may have built a docking slip at some
point along the bay front, as records indicate he was involved
in the region's early tobacco trade.

The new town site was accessible by both the Edenton Bay
and the "Virginia Road," which terminated at the bay front and
led to Nansemond County and "Norfolk town."^^ Jhe vicinity
was fairly well-settled by 1712, and an Anglican vestry had been
established there in 1701.^° The prospects for a new town therefore
must have looked fairly good in 1712, and Colonel Edward Mosely
surveyed the original plan for the new settlement later that year.
Twelve lots wide by three lots deep, the new town lay just east
of the Virginia road. Early growth, however, was slow. The first
lot was not sold until 1715, and the courthouse was not com-
pleted until July 1716.^^ Three years later, in 1718, the town had
a frame courthouse, which was located at some point on the
present courthouse green, a public landing, and two or three small
houses, but scarcely any other evidences of civilization. The
General Assembly reported in 1720 that "there remains great
part of the hundred acres not yet allotted. "^^ The still nameless
settlement simply was known as "ye towne on Queen Anne's
Creek," and by 1722 the tiny hamlet consisted of the courthouse,
a warehouse for taxes and customs duties paid in goods, various
small shops for artisans and merchants, at least one tavern, and
approximately twenty houses. ^^

In the autumn of 1722 the General Assembly decided that
the growing village should be enlarged, incorporated, and
developed as the "metropolis," or capital, of the province. ^'^ The
town was named in honor of the province's late governor, Charles
Eden, and a new plan enlarging the town was laid off on the
west side of the Virginia road, which became Broad Street. This
land had been acquired in 1715 from Thomas Peterson's widow
and the Peterson house was reserved by the General Assembly
to serve as the "Governor's House and Pasture. "^^ Designated
as "Port Roanoke," the town also was reaffirmed as one of the

May, 1989

province's official ports of entry, and an office for the collection
of customs was duly established. Construction also commenced
on a building to house the Governor's Council and the General
Assembly in October 1722.26

Due to the growing population of the Albemarle, the
establishment of Edenton as the capital, and the proximity of
the town to Virginia, Edenton grew more rapidly in the second
quarter of the eighteenth century than other North Carolina towns
of the period. Although actually further from the ocean than any
other in the colony, Edenton bustled as a seaport, with sloops,
snows, and brigantines entering and clearing daily. Edenton
merchants exported a certain amount of tobacco, but naval stores,
lumber, staves, headings, shingles, and planks were far more
important staples. Corn, herring, and pork also were exported;
manufactured goods such as common yard fabrics, linens, silk,
shoes, hats, china, and household items were imported along with
rum, salt, coffee, sugar, and molasses. ^^ William Byrd II of
Westover in Virginia rather caustically described Edenton about
ten years after its incorporation:

This town is Situate on the North side of Albemarle Sound,
which is there about 5 miles over. A Dirty Slash runs all
along the Back of it, which in the Summer is a foul
annoyance, and furnishes abundance of that Carolina
plague, mosquetas. They may be 40 or 50 Houses, most
of them Small and built without Expense. A Citizen here
is counted Extravagant if he has Ambition enough to aspire
to a Brick-Chimney. Justice herself is but indifferently
lodged, the Court-House having much the air of a
Common-Tobacco-House. I believe this is the only
Metropolis in the Christian or Mahometan World, where
there is neither Church, Chappel, Mosque, Synagogue,
or any other Place of Publick Worship of any Sect or
Religion Whatsoever. . . .Provisions here are extremely
cheap, and extremely good, so that People may live plen-
tifully at triffleing expense. Nothing is dear but Law,
Physick, and Strong Drink, which are all bad in their kind,
and the last they get with much Difficulty, that they are
never guilty of the Sin of Suffering it to Sour upon their
Hands. Their Vanity generally lies not so much in having
a handsome dining room, as a Handsome House of Office;
in this kind of structure they are really Extravagant. ^^

MESDA

Byrd's wry description reveals Edenton as a growing town in
the intermediate stage between a frontier society and a cultivated
one. Indeed, Byrd's humorous prose, while exaggerated, is a useful
commentary on the nature of life in a tiny southern port. Inter-
estingly, Byrd may have relied on information obtained from
others in his observations on Edenton, for there is no documen-
tary evidence that he actually visited the place. Edenton continued
to emerge during the 1730s, and Edward Moseley's 1733 M.ap
of North Carolina recorded it as six- block area abutting on Broad
Street, fronting the bay. In his 1737 Natural History of North
Carolina, Dr. John Brickell stated that Edenton was the largest
town in the colony, "consisting of about Sixty Houses, and has
been the Seat of the Governors for many Years. . . . " -^ Edenton
finally entered Byrd's "Christian and Mahometan World" when
construction of St. Paul's Church commenced in 1736.-'^°

Not long after the incorporation of the town in 1722, the
Commissioners of Edenton began the sale of the new lots west
of Broad Street, and they auctioned off Lot One of the new plan
to John Lovick.^' This was the lot upon which the Cupola House
was later built and now stands. Lovick came to the province in
1710 as part of Governor Edward Hyde's entourage; he held
numerous offices in the colony until his demise in 1733. As
surveyor general," in 1728 Lovick was appointed one of the
commissioners to survey the boundary line between North
Carolina and Virginia, and as such he was portrayed as
"Shoebrush" in William Byrd's now-famous Secret History of
the Dividing Line. Lovick apparently was the one North Carolina
commissioner Byrd managed to get along with; Byrd described
Lovick as "a merry good humor'd Man, [who] had learnt a very
decent behaviour from Governor Hyde. . . ."^^ Lovick purchased
Lot Number One of the new plan on 1 November 1722 for a
mere ten shillings. ^"^ Approximately 330 feet long by GG feet wide,
the half-acre lot was at the time ideally situated, adjoining Broad
Street on the east and fronting the waters of Edenton Bay on the
south. -^^ It might seem that such a waterfront lot in a growing
port town would have brought a considerably higher price than
ten shillings. As the 1722 deed stipulates, Lovick's title to the
lot was conditioned upon the following passage:

Provided that if the sd. Jno. Lovick, heirs or assigns do
not errect & build or cause to be errected and built on
the sd. lott or half acre of land be it more or less one

May, 1989

habitable house or edifice not of less dimen. Twenty feet
in length & fifteen feet wide & seants [sic] & also clear
the sd. lott from all trees underbrush or grubbs within
two years after the date of these presents than this covenant
be void & of none effect. . . .[sic]^^

Failure to comply with the stipulation would invalidate the deed,
causing the property then to revert to the town commissioners
to be used or resold as they saw fit. On 7 August 1723 Lovick
sold the lot to Scottish merchant Adam Cockburne, for "a
valuable consideration. "^'^ It is doubtful that Lovick made any
improvements to the lot during his brief, nine-month ownership.
The deed transferring the lot to Cockburne does not mention
any improvements, and the "valuable consideration," cannot
have amounted to much, as Cockburne later sold the lot for five
shillings. 3^

Cockburne, like Lovick, speculated in the town lands of
Edenton.^9 Also like Lovick, Cockburne owned the Cupola House
lot for less than a year, selling it to his friend and political mentor,
Christopher Gale, on 25 April 1724, for the same amount he
had paid for it, five shillings. '^° The deed transferring the lot's
title to Gale again mentions no specific improvements. However,
only eleven days later Christopher Gale sold the lot to Richard
Sanderson, Jr. , of neighboring Perquimans Precinct for the start-
ling sum of £25, exactly one hundred times as much as Gale had
paid for it.'^' Like the previous deeds concerning the lot, no
existence of a house or edifice of any kind is acknowledged in
the transaction. Obviously, Gale could not have made any
substantial improvements to the lot in so short a time, therefore
making the inflated price paid by Sanderson an unusual trans-
action for an apparently vacant lot.

As Chief Justice of the colony from 1712-32, Gale was one
of the most powerful and influential figures in proprietory North
Carolina. "^2 Among Gale's residences was a large plantation along
Queen Anne's creek which bounded Edenton on the east, and
he held numerous local offices along with his proprietary duties. "^^
Gale was one of the first commissioners of Edenton, and he was
collector of customs for Port Roanoke at the time of his death
in 1734. As an influential member of the General Assembly and
Governor's Council himself, Richard Sanderson, Jr., was
acquainted with Gale prior to his purchase of Lot One in the spring
of 1724. Since Sanderson was not a resident of Chowan, Gale

MESDA

simply may have acted as his agent in buying the lot. In such
a case, Gale's services would not have come without a fee, and
perhaps the 25 included a hefty commission for himself. It is also
possible that Chief Justice Gale saw an opportunity to garner a
substantial profit from an "outsider," although this seems
unlikely since Sanderson married Mrs. Gale's sister soon afterward.

Documentary evidence surrounding the construction of the
Cupola House requires an examination of the Sanderson family.
Richard Foster, an English sea-captain whose name appears in
the records of Lower Norfolk County, Virginia, as early as 1641,
was granted 150 acres by the General Court of Lower Norfolk
County for having transported Richard Sanderson, Sr., John
Sanderson, and a "maid servant" named Joane to the colony. "^"^
The Sandersons also appear to have been Englishmen; the careers
of Richard Foster and Richard Sanderson, Sr., were closely
entwined from this date onward.

In the early 1660s, Captain Foster and Richard Sanderson both
moved into the Albemarle Region, settling in what is today
Currituck County. Richard Sanderson, Sr., later stated in a
deposition of 13 June 1711 that he had come to North Caroline
"ye yere next after King Charles II was restored" and settled "ncre
the head of Currituck Bay, which runs about twelve or fourteen
miles to the narw's of Currituck mlet."'^^ Foster apparently settled
nearby, and he quickly acquired prominence in the new province.
In the 1670s Foster was appointed as one of the Lords Proprietors'
deputies and served as such on the Governor's Council throughout
the decade; he also rose to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel and
Commander of the Albemarle militia at the same time.^*^
Although a representative of the Proprietors, Foster was one of
the leaders of "Culpeper's Rebellion" in 1677-78, a brief uprising
against the arbitrary rule of Proprietary Governor Thomas Miller.
In fact, after reviewing the rebellion, the King's Council in
England concluded that Richard Foster had helped young John
Culpeper "contrive" the riots. "^"^ Following Culpeper's Rebellion,
Foster served as a member of the council in 1680 under Gover-
nor John Jenkins, who replaced the deposed Thomas Miller. This
is the last record of Foster in the colony; no record of his death
has survived. '^^

It was Captain Richard Foster and the antiproprietary faction
that introduced Richard Sanderson, Sr., to the turbulent politics
of proprietary North Carolina by choosing him to serve in the
assembly following the overthrow of Governor Thomas Miller in

May, 1989

December 1677. ^^ From this moment until his death in 1718,
Sanderson held numerous and influential offices in Carolina's
proprietary government. Among other positions, he served as a
member of the council, member of the assembly, a justice of the
general court and court of chancery, and a proprietary deputy. ^°
Sanderson was most influential as a member of the Governor's
Council, and he was one of the leaders of the successful oppo-
sition to corrupt Governor Seth Sothel in the late l680s.^i Foster
may have been more than Sanderson's mentor in politics, possibly
serving as well to instruct him in the "lessons of the sea." After
establishing his plantation "near the head of Currituck Bay,"
Sanderson became a ship owner of some pretensions and appar-
ently became quite prominent in the early coastal tobacco trade.
Two of his vessels, Richard of Currituck and Richard of North
Carolina, both shallops of four tons burden, appear frequently
in the early port records of Rappahanock, Virginia. The master
of both vessels was Sanderson's son, Richard, Jr.^^ 'phe elder
Sanderson's plantation was approximately 1,300 acres, and he
owned twelve slaves at the time of his death in 1718." Along
with Richard, Jr., Sanderson also was involved in a partnership
with Hugh Campbell and Governor Henderson Walker to raise
cattle on Ocracoke island, but this attempt was not successful.^"*
Despite such abortive ventures, the Sandersons have been
adjudged one of the wealthiest families in North Carolina between
1717-21.55

Little is known about the personal life of Richard Sanderson,
Sr., who was born in 1641. The name of his first wife remains
unknown, as does the exact number of his children. At least four,
however, are known: sons Richard, Jr. and Joseph, and daughters
Susanna and Cesiah.^^ About 1711, Sanderson married a widow,
Damarus Coleman, whose first husband, Ellis Coleman, "died
beyond the seas intestate" leaving her as administratrix to a "vastly
troubled" estate."

On 29 July 1718 Thomas Swann, Damarus Sanderson's
attorney, exhibited in court what Mrs. Sanderson claimed was
"the last will and testament of her late husband Richard
Sanderson, Esquire." On the same day, however, Richard
Sanderson, Jr., entered a "caveat against sd. will of his father. "^^
After hearing the testimony of both sides, and "the evidences
thereto being examined," the court ruled that "the same is not
a good will" and indicted William Alexander, the Collector of
Customs for Port Currituck, for forgery. Mr Alexander's

10 MESDA

subsequent testimony on 30 March 1721 explicates the case:

Wm. Alexander setting forth that he being a person very
ignorant in any legal proceedings, through the over-
persuasion of Mrs. Damarus Sanderson he undertook to
write the will of Richard Sanderson, Esquire, husband of
the said Damarus . . . and being ignorant of the conse-
quence of such matters did by her order put severell things
without any orders from the said Richard Sanderson not
then considering but that her orders were sufficient for
his so doing. ... ^9

Alexander later was absolved of the forgery charge, and the estate
of Richard Sanderson, Sr. was properly administrated by Richard,
Jr. Damaras Sanderson died in 1719, soon after her November
1718 marriage to Thomas Swann,"^" thus escaping any criminal
charges that may have been brought against her.

Born in Currituck Precinct in either the late 1660s or early
1670s, Richard Sanderson, Jr., learned navigation from his father
at an early age. Late-seventeenth-century port records show that
he served as master of many ships in the early coastal tobacco
trade, and he became involved in the more lucrative New England
and West Indies trade while still a young man.^^i In March 1698
a vice-admiralty court charged that Richard Sanderson, Jr., along
with Captain Anthony Dawson and others, "rifled, defaced and
broke up HMS Swift Advice, a ship of war of our sovereign Lord
the Kind driven on shore in this government by storm and
deserted"; Sanderson was arrested and jailed soon afterward. ^^
The charge later was dropped, however, apparently because of
the influence of his father, who posted bond and paid several
"fees" for Richard, Jr. 's release from prison. ^^ Later, in 1714
merchant John Blish accused Richard Sanderson, Jr. in court of
illegally transporting two of his Indian slaves to New England
for sale; the court subsequently found Sanderson guilty and
awarded Blish the amount of money Sanderson had received for
the sale of the two Indian slaves plus an additional 30 for
"damages."^"* Despite such shenanigans, Sanderson prospered
greatly in the New England and West Indies trade, and he soon
became one of the leading maritime merchants in North Carolina.

In the first decades of the eighteenth century, young Richard
Sanderson acquired title to a vast acreage throughout the Outer
Banks region and along the northern shore of Albemarle Sound. ''^

May, 1989 11

Among other lands, he obtained and procured clear titles to the
entire island of Ocracoke and half of Roanoke Island. *^^ Sander-
son's small fleet of vessels, including the brigantine Sea Flower
of 40 tons and the sloop Swallow of 10 tons, utilized both
Ocracoke and Roanoke for transferring coastal and West Indian
cargoes; in fact, the corridor between Roanoke Island and the
mainland came to be known as "Sanderson's Channel" during
the early years of the eighteenth century. ^^ Sanderson also was
instrumental in trying to establish a town near the present location
of Manteo on Roanoke Island, but these efforts failed in 1716
and again in 1723.^^ At some date prior to 1715, Sanderson
established his "manor plantation" on the west bank of Little
River in Perquimans Precinct where he resided until his death
in 1733.^' He owned quite a few slaves, both Indian and black.

In March 1715 the assembly and general court met at "Captain
Richard Sanderson's house in Little River. "^° His political career
had begun at an early age; records reveal that he was appointed
a justice of the general court and member of the council on 22
April 1695.^' From that date onward, Sanderson was a constant
member of council and justice of the general court, and he twice
served as speaker of the assembly (1709, 1715-16). ^^ j^ 1712
Sanderson married Elizabeth Mason of Virginia, the widow of
Thomas Mason (d. 1711), who had been a member of the House
of Burgesses in 1696 and a justice of Lower Norfolk County. ^^
She apparently was Sanderson's second wife; the name of his first
wife remains unknown. Elizabeth Mason Sanderson died soon
afterward, however, and Sanderson remarried in 1726, taking
widow Ruth Laker Minge, Christopher Gale's sister-in-law, as his
third wife.^^ Tragically, the third Mrs. Sanderson died two years
later in 1728, leaving Sanderson a three-time widower. ''^ At least
three children were born to Sanderson, apparently all in union
with his first wife: Richard, III (d. 1737), Grace (d. 1744), and
Elizabeth (d. 1767).^^ The name "Richard Sanderson" appeared
in three following generations of the direct descendants of Richard,
Sr., of Currituck; the death of Richard Sanderson VI of Durants
Neck without heirs in 1816 brought to a close one of the most
influential and prominent family lines in the history of early North
Carolina.''^

As we have seen, Sanderson purchased new plan Lot One from
Christopher Gale for £25 on 6 May 1724. ^« Neither Sanderson's
deed nor any of the previous transactions renewed the amount
of time allotted for improvement in the initial property deed;

12 MESDA

thus, instead of an additional two years, Sanderson had just six
months before the reversion deadline to erect, or at least begin
construction of, a "habitable house or edifice . . . not less than
twenty feet in length, fifteen in breadth eight half- feet in
height. "■'^ Sanderson indeed fulfilled the requirement for
improvement; two years later, on 26 April 1726, he sold "lot
no. one &. house in the new plan of the town of Edenton" to
John Dunston for £100.^" This is the first recorded acknowledge-
ment of the existence of a house upon the lot, and the price of
£100, while not exorbitant, indicates that it was a fairly substan-
tial dwelling. Yet one cannot determine with documented
certainty from ths record alone that the dwelling erected for
Richard Sanderson, Jr., in 1724-26 was actually the structure
known today as the Cupola House. However, the acknowledge-
ment of a house in every one of the later property deeds strongly
suggests that the dwelling constructed for Sanderson was indeed
the Cupola House. From this scant information, we may surmise
that the Cupola House, or at least a portion of it, was built during
the years 1724-26.

Several plausible explanations exist regarding Sanderson's
motives for constructing a dwelling in Edenton at the time. As
a frequent member of the council and assembly, Sanderson might
have wanted a residence in the new capital for convenience when
the legislature met; the house could have provided revenue from
rental the rest of the time. Sanderson's estate papers reveal that
his shipping interests brought him into frequent contact with
various Edenton merchants, and it is possible that Sanderson
wished to extablish a "seat" of business in Edenton. Simple
speculation is another motive, since the house was located close
to the planned site of the new courthouse. An even more personal
motive, though improbable, is suggested by the marriage of
Sanderson's daughter, Elizabeth, to John Crisp, the son of an
Edenton merchant, in July 1725; perhaps the Cupola House was
constructed to serve as the young couple's first home.^'

More difficult to determine, however, is the original appear-
ance of the structure, and this question has produced divided
opinions among scholars who have studied the structure and its
history. In its present state, the Cupola House, with its lavish
interiors, imposing chimneys, and crowning "lanthorne," makes
much more sense architecturally as an elegant townhouse for the
wealthy Sanderson or as a dwelling for his daughter and son-in-
law than it does as a dwelling for rent or sale. Nevertheless, records

May, 1989 13

reveal that Sanderson sold the structure soon after its comple-
tion for a seemingly low sum.^^ This fact has suggested to some
that the Cupola House was originally a more modest dwelling,
perhaps simply plastered inside in lieu of its splendid paneled
and carved interiors known today. ^^ Editor's note: we found it
appropriate to add the following information regarding contem-
porary property sale prices to Mr. Cheeseman 's study. The £100
sale price of Sanderson's house indeed seems low, but it is difficult
to compare with other structures of the period. Houses were
seldom described in deeds, and their value was contained within
the total value of the real estate. Listed values can be problem-
atical, since considerations may have been present that were not
reflected in stated deed values. An extensive search of Chowan
County deed books by Elizabeth Vann Moore reveals that during
1723-26, Edenton properties with improvements sold for as little
as £15 (Thomas Matthews to William Badham, lot 36 in the Old
Plan, with buildings, 13 March 1723/4) and as much as £230
(Patrick Ogilby, joiner, to James Winwright, lot 10 in the Old
Plan, with houses, 13 October 1724). On 23 March 1726/7,
Christopher Gale sold William Little lot 20 in the Old Plan,
containing houses, edifices, and fences, for only £53. Both men
were resident on this site, and since both were men of station
and wealth, the house hardly could have "been a shanty," in
Miss Moore's words. None of these structures survive, however.
As in the transferral of the Cupola house, the sale price of each
represented pounds sterling, for there was no North Carolina
provincial currency at the time. In Williamsburg, gunsmith John
Brush's story-and-a-half house, which still stands on Palace Street,
was sold in 1728 for £100 Virginia currency; the two rear wings
now a part of the dwelling had not yet been added. At that time,
a Virginia pound was worth approximately 80 percent of a pound
sterling. The Brush house, therefore, sold for about £80 sterling.
John Dunston, who purchased the house from Sanderson, had
been appointed the "Naval Officer and Receiver of the Tenths
of the Fishery ... for that part of Carolina . . . that lyes north
and east of Cape Fear; the Lords Proprietors had awarded him
that office in June 1723. ^'^ As Naval Officer of North Carolina,
Dunston's responsibilities included the keeping of all the
province's shipping records and the collection of various bills of
custom accordingly due. For his efforts, Dunston was to receive
a fee of £10 for every 100 of customs duties collected. ^^ Consider-
ing that there were four official ports in the Pamlico and

14 MESDA

Albemarle by 1723 — Bath, Beaufort, Currituck and Roanoke
— Dunston's job was arduous. He departed England soon after
his appointment and arrived in Edenton in the autumn of 1723;
on 16 November Dunston appeared before the council with his
commission and instructions and took the oath of office.^''

At the time of Dunston's appointment, George Burrington
was governor of the colony, and Dunston, like many other
officials, soon ran afoul of the tempestuous Burrington. In May
1724 Burrington attempted to replace Dunston with a favorite
of his own. However, his effort was thwarted by the assembly,
who staunchly supported John Dunston; Dunston in fact appears
to have been quite popular in the colony despite the fact that
his job was to collect the customs.^' In explaining his action to
the Lords Proprietors, Burrington exclaimed that "Dunston's
ill-behaviour obliged me to do so how can he be Naval Officer
to four ports (there being so many here) passes the understanding
of all people of these parts. "«^ Dunston's triumph was short-lived,
however; he died two years later in the late summer of 1726.

It is not known if Dunston's wife Martha emigrated to the
colony with her husband in 1723, or, whether she was an Edenton
woman whom Dunston met and married soon after his arrival. ^^
The Dunstons apparently boarded at first, perhaps at the house
of Thomas and Ann Parris, and circumstantial evidence seems
to suggest that the Dunstons may have been living in the Cupola
House some months prior to John Dunston's actual purchase of
the property in the spring of 1726.9° Martha Dunston acquired
full title to the dwelling and lot by right of her husband's will.
At the time of his death, John Dunston and his family (probably
two small sons by then) had occupied the Cupola House less than
a year. Probated on 24 September 1726, John Dunston's will of
15 November 1724 simply stated: "I give and bequeath to my
loving wife Martha Dunston all my real & personal estate forever
and do hereby appoint her my sole Executrix. . . ."^^ Eleven
months later, on 1 August 1727, Martha Dunston sold her "lott
& house" back to Richard Sanderson, Jr., for £100, the exact price
that her husband had paid for it.^^ It appears, however, that Mar-
tha Dunston and her family continued to reside in the dwelling
until the summer of 1730, when she purchased a dwelling and
four lots "uptown" (two blocks north of the Cupola House) on
the east side of Broad Street, the site upon which the Thomas
Barker House was later built. ^^ As executrix of her husband's
estate, Martha Dunston probably sold the Cupola House and lot

May, 1989 15

back to Richard Sanderson, Jr., in 1727 to raise "ready money"
for settling the estate; she may have waited until that respon-
sibility was taken care of before she purchased another dwelling. ^^
After Martha Dunston's lease ended in 1730, Sanderson probably
continued to use the house as rental property until he sold it once
again on 12 November 1731 to a merchant newly-arrived from
England, William Morton. Morton paid "85 pounds Province
Bills" for the property. This is the first deed that indicates that
possible further improvements had been made to the lot, since
it acknowledges "houses outhouses & Edifices" upon the half-
acre tract. 95 The "85 pounds Province bills," however, represents
a depreciated sales price, and certainly does not suggest that any
substantial improvements had been made to the property.

For the next twenty-five years, 1731-56, the Cupola House
was owned by William Morton and his heirs. ^^ Unfortunately,
little is known of William Morton, and extensive research pro-
duced only fragments of documentary material regarding his life
and residence in Edenton during the 1730s and 1740s. Morton
was apparently a factor for a mercantile firm in Newcastle-upon-
Tyne. His 1731 deed for the Cupola House is the first recorded
evidence of his presence in North Carolina, and his name appears
irregularly for the next eighteen years or so in various Chowan
County records, such as tax and jury lists and court minutes.
Besides dealing with Edenton merchants, a later power of attorney
indicates that Morton was doing business with merchants in
Northampton County, Bertie County, and the town of New Bern
as well. 9^ Such a wide range of business and travel was not
uncommon for an active colonial factor. ^^ Although the Cupola
House apparently served as Morton's residence while he was in
the colony, it may have been leased out as rental property during
the years Morton was absent on business from North Carolina.

On 23 August 1732 William Morton "of Edenton" appointed
John Montgomery, then the Attorney General of North Carolina,
as his "true certain and lawful attorney" to:

[act] for me [Morton] and in my name for and on my
behalf to contract, agree for, and to sell and dispose of
my house and lot in said town of Edenton distinguished
by the number or figure of (1) one in the new plan of
the said town, and upon sale thereof commence and on
my behalf to sign, seal and execute all or any such deeds,
conveyances and assurances. . . .^9

16 MESDA

Morton probably made the power of attorney while preparing
to return to England, and the document seems to suggest that
at the time Morton did not expect to return to North Carolina.
However, Morton did indeed later return, and Montgomery never
sold the dwelling and lot as specified, for Morton's heirs acquired
the title to it upon his death in the 1740s.'°° Thus it seems
plausible that John Montgomery may have utilized the Cupola
House as his Edenton townhouse during Morton's apparently
prolonged absences from the colony, since the power of attorney
would have given him a nominal title to the property in such
a situation. Montgomery's possible residence in the house is not
a documented certainty, however, for he also owned other
properties in Edenton. i'^' It may be that Montgomery merely acted
as a rental agent and attorney for William Morton. Indeed, the
scarcity of material on both Montgomery and Morton precludes
any facts about their use of the Cupola House; indeed, virtually
nothing, with the exception of ownership, can be documented
about the Cupola House itself during the twenty-five years it was
owned by William Morton and his heirs. This is undoubtedly
the most obscure period in the structure's history, and Morton
today remains the leading engima in the puzzling history of the
Cupola House.

Either a bachelor or a widower, William Morton died in the
mid-1740s. He apparently was in Edenton at the time of his death;
he left no will. As next of kin, Morton's brother, George, and
his sister, Elizabeth Graham, inherited the Cupola House and
lot. Soon afterward, George Morton, a Newcastle-upon-Tyne
mercier and clothier, died, and his interest in the property passed
to his daughter Margaret Peck, niece of William Morton and the
wife of William Peck, "gentleman" of Newbiggin in the county
of Northumberland. '°2 The Morton heirs never left England, and
they signed a power of attorney in 1749 with three North Carolina
lawyers, Thomas Barker of Bertie County, William Cathcart of
Northampton County, and Daniel Granden of the town of New
Bern and Craven County to settle the estate of ' 'William Morton,
late of Edenton in North Carolina in America, merchant,
deceased." The power of attorney authorized Messrs. Barker,
Cathcart, and Granden

... to make execute & give & to sell 8c to dispose of &
bargain for all or any such messuage tenant lands grounds
lots hereditaments goods & effects to & with any person

May, 1989 17

or persons whomsoever as the or any of them shall think
& adjudge right. '"^

The subsequent history of the Cupola House centered upon
the controversial career of Francis Corbin, who had come to the
colony to assist in overseeing management of one of the largest
privately-held blocks of land in North America. This vast tract
was a remnant of the territory controlled by the Lords Proprietors
for sixty-five years. Although Anglo- Virginians settled in the area
north of Albemarle Sound as early as 1655, before the Proprietary
charter, the North Carolina frontier had advanced inland only
about 100 miles by the 1720s. Dr. John Brickell, an Irish physician
who lived in Edenton for a short time about 1730, reported that:

The planters for the most part live by the water side, few
or none living in the In-land parts of the country at present,
though the Lands are as good and fertile as any that are
yet inhabited; but not so commodious for carriage as by
the Water, for most part of the Plantations run but a Mile
backwood into the Woods, so that betwixt every River you
shall see vast Tracts of Land lying waste, or inhabited only
by Wild Beasts. '"^

This comparatively slow development of the colony forced seven
of the eight Proprietors of Carolina to sell their lands back to the
Crown in 1728; only John Carteret, Earl of Granville, retained
his share, which consisted of the country lying south of the Virginia
border to 35 ° 34' north latitude. '"^ The charter granting this ter-
ritory, which comprised most of the northern half of the colony,
was not completed until 17 September 1744, some sixteen years
after the end of North Carolina's proprietary rule. Two months
later. Earl Granville sent one of his attorneys, Francis Corbin,
to America with the new proprietary charter and various other
packets of documents and letters for the governors of the two
Carolinas. Corbin was also to meet with Colonel Edward Moseley,
who had been the Earl's agent in North Carolina since 1740, and
deliver to him Granville's personal instructions for the conduct
of his now greatly enlarged proprietary affairs. According to the
instructions, Corbin was to be given considerable responsibilities.
The arrival of Francis Corbin at Charleston in the winter of 1744-45
marks the beginning of one of the stormiest political careers in
colonial North Carolina. ^'^

18 MESDA

Francis Corbin (?-1767) was born in Great Britain of unknown
parentage, probably in the first decades of the eighteenth century.
Research in the British Archives failed to reveal Corbin 's ancestry,
but it now seems certain that he was not related to the promi-
nent Thomas Corbin family of Hall End, Warwick, whose
descendants distinguished themselves in colonial Virginia. Francis
Corbin's early life has also remained a mystery. Circumstancial
evidence suggests that he was from the London area, a son of
an apparently well-to-do family. That he received a liberal
education, however, is evident; Corbin was extremely well-read
and an efficient and aggressive orator and epistolarian. Although
no known portrait of Corbin survives today, his letters suggest
that he was of slight build, perhaps even frail in nature. His travels
throughout the vast Granville district constantly left him physically
exhausted. Intelligent and sharp, but opinionated and outspoken,
Corbin seems to have been either admired or detested, and his
unsteeped ambition and political acumen evoked responses of
both sentiments from colonial North Carolinians. ^"^

Receiving Earl Granville's instructions and other packets,
Corbin departed London aboard a British Navy Man of War in
mid-November 1744, and he probably arrived at Charleston about
the New Year. After meeting with Governor Glenn of South
Carolina, Corbin traveled to the Cape Fear where he met Colonel
Edward Moseley as instructed. Corbin's letter of introduction from
the Earl to Mosely revealed Granville's faith in Corbin:

Mr. Corbin, who is sent with These to Mr. Mosely, is one

I have a value for, whom I recommend to Mr. Moseley.

He will be assistant to & act in Concert with him in my

affairs, & when some progress shall have been made

therein. He is to return home, & by him Mr. Moseley will

fully inform me of all matters & I hope, be able to transmit

to me a complete Rent Roll. What money Mr. Corbin shall

want for the time he shall remain in North Carolina &

on his return home, I have desired Mr. Moseley to supply

with from time to time, taking his Receipts to the amount

of two hundred pounds ster. charging the same to my

account.

GRANVILLE. 108

The letter also specifically stated that "Mr. Corbin will avoid
concerning himself in any disputes among the Gentlemen in

May, 1989 19

North Carolina," an instruction that Corbin did not heed.'"'
Indeed, it appears from the records that Corbin and Moseley soon
fell into disagreement over the nature of Corbin's responsibilities.
Moseley, a proud and prominent North Carolinian, ignored
Granville's instructions and shared his duties instead with a fellow-
Carolinian, Robert Halton.

As a consequence of Moseley 's defiance, Corbin found himself
without immediate employment in North Carolina since Earl
Granville had provided him with neither a commission nor a
power of attorney. Granville's £200 allowance probably lasted
for a short time, for Corbin seems to have been a man of elegant
taste. By the winter of 1745, Corbin was forced to advertise in
the South Carolina Gazette that he would teach reading, writing,
and arithmetic. '1° However, successful appeals to his patron
brought Corbin a commission the following year, when Gran-
ville made him one of the commissioners to survey and extend
the southern boundary of the proprietary. Corbin and the other
commissioners surveyed the boundary line from a site at Deep
Creek in Chatham County, where the survey had been terminated
in 1743, to a point on Coldwater Creek in Rowan County near
present-day Salisbury. There they were forced to discontinue their
work because the country was so thinly populated that they could
not obtain sufficient corn for their horses or provisions for
themselves. ''> This was the first of many trips Corbin was to make
across his patron's vast piedmont lands. Considerable progress
having thus been made in the Earl's affairs, Corbin returned to
London in early 1747 as instructed, undoubtedly to "fully inform
Granville of all matters. "^'^

Very little is known about Corbin's initial three-year stay in
North Carolina. He apparently resided in the Cape Fear region,
associating with luminaries there such as Moseley, "King" Roger
Moore, James Moore, Matthew Rowan, and John Swann."^ Corbin
apparently traveled throughout much of the colony, however,
and he must have visited Edenton, although his name does not
appear in any of the Chowan records for the period. Corbin's
associates, all political opponents of Governor Gabriel Johnston,
undoubtedly influenced Corbin's subsequent opposition to the
governor, which began almost immediately following his return
to London.

In London Corbin established a mercantile business for trade
with North Carolina, and he soon became one of the leading
figures in the London-based anti-Johnstonian forces seeking the

20 MESDA

governor's removal."'* In a 1748 letter to the Duke of Bedford,
Secretary of State for the Southern Provinces, Corbin represented
himself as a "Person interested in the Province of North
Carolina," and assailed Johnson's performance as governor:

From all which and other illegal Measures of the said Govt,
the Colony is now thrown into the utmost Confusion, its
Credit utterly destroyed, and the whole Province is become
little better, than a Resceptacle and Asylum for Fugitives,
and Persons of desperated Fortunes & Characters."^
In spite of other such character assassinations — Johnston was
even accused of disloyalty to the Crown — the charges by Corbin
and others came to naught as the governor presented an able
defense."*^ What Corbin sought for himself in a Johnston dismissal
is unknown. In any event, Granville once again became Corbin 's
employer in October 1749; he commissioned Corbin and Thomas
Child as his proprietary agents following the deaths of Edward
Moseley and Robert Halton in North Carolina."^ Armed with
powers of attorney for North Carolina and instructed by Gran-
ville to set the proprietary affairs in order and to open a land
office in Edenton, Corbin and Child returned to the colony in
1750.

Both agents landed at Edenton, and Corbin apparently leased
a plantation "several" miles from town. The exact location of
this plantation remains unknown, but circumstancial evidence
suggests it was just west of Edenton at the mouth of Pembroke
Creek, and included the 156-acre "Strawberry Island" in Edenton
Bay "opposite the town.""^ The agents worked quickly and
opened the land office by October. In spite of the animosity
between Gabriel Johnston and Corbin, the governor reported to
Lord Granville in November 1750:

Mr. Corbin has been very Industrious all this summer in
placing the office in order and settling the accounts. He
tells me he has now adjusted everything and hath all the
books and papers intherein proper; he seems to have a
head very well qualified for this sort of business. "^

Besides establishing Granville's land office and putting the
Earl's affairs in order, Corbin entered a trading partnership with
merchant-tobacco shipper John Campbell of Bertie County, a
successful merchant in the Albemarle Region. ^^o gy jj^^ spring

May, 1989 21

of 175 1 , as Child was planning a return to London, Corbin stood
to become the Earl's sole resident agent. This situation was dis-
cussed by Governor Johnston in a letter to Granville of 5 March:

One of your Lords' agents [Child] takes his final leave of

this province next June, and so all the business will of

course fall unto the hands of the other [Corbin]. What

that Gentleman's Fortune or Credit may be at Home I

don't pretend to know, but unless both are tolerably good

I am afraid he will be pretty much puzzled to make regular

remittances, for I am told he is engaged in shipping and

trade with Campbell and some others and that he has just

bought a pretty deal of plate, four or five negroes, and

lately all Mr. Child's Books and Furniture which in all must

amount to about £400 by a very modest computation . . .

but to do this Gentleman justice, I must add that he has

brought your Lordships Office into most excellent order.

He has sorted all the papers and brought up the books

and settled all the accounts in a most clear and diligent
manner. '21

It should be noted that Johnston warned the Earl regarding
Corbin 's financial security and ability to make regular remittances,
sensible advice in light of Corbin's eminent succession to a most
lucrative office. Following Thomas Child's departure, Corbin did
indeed assume full control of the Earl's affairs; although Corbin
later was joined by a succession of co-agents, he remained the
principal proprietary agent resident in the colony during the
following decade.

As mentioned. Earl Granville reserved to himself all the rights
of ownership to his 1/8 share of North Carolina when the Lords
Proprietors sold the sovereignty of the colony back to the Crown
in 1728. Granville hoped to utilize this enormous tract of land
as a source of revenue by renting small tracts of it to various
tenants, charging them a fee for the surveying and issuing of the
land grant and then a quit rent for the purpose of occupying the
land for cultivation. 122 if it had functioned as planned, the land
policy would have contributed mightily to Granville's fortune.
In addition to the principal land office in Edenton, other
"frontier" offices were later established at Enfield, "Corbinton"
(now Hillsborough), and Salisbury. Corbin hired numerous agents
to issue warrants, survey, and register grants. Corbin himself

22 MESDA

apparently made annual trips across the Granville District, final-
izing land grants and collecting outstanding fees. Since more than
sixty thousand settlers moved into piedmont North Carolina
during the 1750s, Granville's land agency prospered f??st and
grew increasingly larger. It is not surprising that the agency soon
attracted those who apparently were more interested in lining their
pockets with quit rents rather than the Earl's. By the late 1750s
the Granville land agency was fraught with corruption, and Francis
Corbin, as the Earl's principal resident agent, became the natural
target of complaints by the Granville district's increasingly
disgruntled settlers; this situation eventually led to the Enfield
Riot of 1759 and the birth of the Regulator movements that
culminated at the Battle of Alamance in 1771.'^^

The early 1750s, however, were quite prosperous and virtually
untroubled for Corbin and his patron, although the Earl did warn
Corbin to be "diligent and careful ('for your own sake') and to
make doubly sure that all business transactions were handled
"with order and requisite decency. "1^4 in the late summer of
1752 Corbin successfully managed Granville's sale of 98,000 acres
to the Moravians, eliciting a favorable view of Corbin by Bishop
Spangenberg, the emissary of Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf:

I have had the opportunity to spend several hours
conversing with Mr. Corbin. He is very busy, being not
only My Lord Granville's agent but also Judge of the Court
of Admiralty and of the Supreme Court, not to speak of
other employments; however, almost every day I have
spent some hours with him, which was to my advantage.
He is a walking Encyclopedia concerning North Carolina
affairs, is capable, polite, and very obliging. ... In short
I think My Lord Granville has in him a capable agent, the
Governor a wise councilor, and the land a just Judge. Our
humble Respects to My Lord Granville for his recommen-
dations to this man, who, so far as I can judge, is an honor
to him. '25

By virtue of his commission as a proprietary agent, Corbin
was given numerous appointments in North Carolina's royal
government, serving at one time or another as a member of the
Governor's Council, judge of the court of vice-admiralty, an
associate justice in the colony's general court system, colonel of
the Chowan Military Militia, and a justice in Chowan's court of

May, 1989 23

pleas and quarter sessions. In connection with his duties as
Granville's land agent, Corbin was also commissioned a justice
of the peace for any and all of the counties located in or created
from the Earl's lands. '^*^ Corbin 's political influence therefore was
considerable. He quickly came into conflict with North Carolina's
new Royal Governor, Arthur Dobbs, over a number of issues,
including his own conduct as agent to Earl Granville. In fact,
the ambitious Corbin and obstreperous Dobbs waged political
war on each other throughout the late 1750s, and if Corbin
thought Dobbs was too old and anile — Dobbs was sixty-six years
of age when he arrived in the colony in 1754 — he was sorely
mistaken. Following an attack by Corbin on his character in 1755,
Dobbs briskly wrote Lord Granville:

However since Mr. Corbin has been pleased to attack my
character unjustly, your Lordship must allow me to
acquaint you to the character he bears here, and part of
his management of your Lordships affairs and his conduct
as one of the council. First it is said that there is no
dependence on his veracity or belief to be given to his
word, that for his own ends he is often guilty of
misrepresentation and declaring of untruths, and he has
occasioned much coldness between him and his neighbors
and with many gentlemen in the country . . . and [he]
expects to be allowed great liberties as being your Lord-
ships agent. . . .As to his management of your Lordship's
affairs, he carries it with a high hand to the claimant of
warrants for lands; he fixed his office at Col. Haywoods'
in Edgecombe County for all warrants and deeds, and no
person is to be admitted but through Col. Haywood or
his sons, for which money must be paid ... to gain his
friendship . . . and no person knows what fees are
charged.'^"'

As principal resident agent, Corbin was held accountable for
the abuses that were practiced on the Earl's tenants by his
lieutenants, who often charged excessive fees and made illegal
and arbitrary decisions regarding disputed land claims. Granville
himself apparently had no inkling at first of any trouble regarding
his land agency; he wrote Corbin in the summer of 1754: "I am
well satisfied in your conduct and diligence in my affairs . . .
the accounts and papers . . . give me an agreeable proof of your

24 MESDA

zeal and diligence in my service that you have singly gone through
so much business and so well dispatched it J^^ The depredations
of Corbin's agents steadily worsened in the following years,
however, and in November 1758 Edgecombe representative
William Williams petitioned the General Assembly to inquire
into the conduct of Francis Corbin and his co-agent at the time,
Joshua Bodley. Less than two months later, an investigative
committee roundly condemned the unjust exactions of the
Granville land agency, calling the situation "deplorable" and
censuring Corbin and Bodley for "neglect and misconduct. ' ' The
assembly, however, adjourned without any redress against Corbin,
which greatly enraged many of the inhabitants of the Granville
District and apparently provoked the rumor that Corbin had
escaped indictment because he was a bastard son of Earl Gran-
ville.'^^ By early 1759 the Granville District, particularly
Edgecombe, Halifax, and Granville counties, seethed with ill will
towards the Earl and his proprietary underlings, and in particular
towards Corbin. The Earl's tenants were not alone in their
disgruntlement at the time, for Corbin had managed quite
successfully to offend and upset a number of individuals with
considerable political influence in the colony's affairs during the
previous two years. He had reported to Granville that Dobbs was
granting proprietary lands illegally, and he made an enemy of
the powerful land speculator Henry Eustace McCuUoch by issuing
patents on a tract of McCulloch's land. McCulloch assailed Corbin
as a man of ' 'sordid. Wicked and Avaricious intention" and filed
suit against him for over 8,000 in "damages. "^^°

Public action against Corbin was taken on the night of 24
January 1759, when Colonel Alexander McCulloch, with an extra-
legal posse of about twenty men from the Edgecombe region,
aroused by "the felicituos use of ardent liquors," as Corbin put
it, seized the agent at his plantation just outside Edcnton and
forcibly carried him off to his Enfield office some seventy miles
inland in Edgecombe (now Halifax) County; there the "traitorous
rioters" held Corbin and his co-agent, Joshua Bodley, under
armed guard until they agreed to a number of concessions for
land policy reformation. After signing a bond which guaranteed
his appearance at the next spring term of the Superior Court —
where and when he was to refund all unjust fees taken from the
people — Corbin was released by his captors unharmed. Almost
gleefully, Governor Dobbs reported the incident to the Board
of Trade. 1^1

May, 1989 25

Immediately after his release, Corbin began to take steps to
prosecute the rioters, and he managed to persuade Dobbs to offer
a reward for the capture of his abductors. A number of rioters
were arrested and jailed at Enfield, but the jail was broken open
soon afterward by another "Mob" and the prisoners set free as
emotions continued to run high in Edgecombe. ^^^ Corbin,
however, continued his efforts to prosecute the rioters, until his
friend Robert Jones, then the colony's attorney general, warned
that if matters came to trial Corbin would be the principal sufferer,
since he could not justify some of his actions, and that the fault
would undoubtedly be laid to the charge of Corbin 's agency. The
Enfield Riot, as it came to be called, was fraught with other
disastrous results for Corbin as well. Bsides being unsuccessful
in his attempt to bring the ringleaders to justice, Corbin was
stripped of all his Crown offices, including his council seat, by
Governor Dobbs, who undoubtedly had been waiting for such
an incident to use against Corbin. Corbin also was dismissed from
the service of Lord Granville, who removed his protection and
revoked his power of attorney to Corbin on 25 April 1759-^^^ Thus
rejected by the leadership on both sides of the Atlantic, Francis
Corbin's political associations with the Crown and North
Carolina's royal government came to an abrupt end.

Corbin, ever the shrewd politician, nevertheless managed to
get himself elected to the General Assembly the very next year
as a representative of his home county, Chowan, where his repu-
tation apparently was not touched materially by the Enfield Riot
episode. Once in the assembly, Corbin joined with Thomas Child,
Robert Jones, and Thomas Barker — a group that Dobbs labeled
the "Northern Junto" since they all had extensive interests in
Granville's proprietary lands — in opposing the administration
of the governor at every opportunity.'^^ Indeed, by the summer
of 1760 Corbin had sufficiently aroused the General Assembly
with his own version of the Enfield Riot that the assembly,
"greatly shocked at the traitorous conspiracies of the rioters and
at the arrest of the gentle Corbin," condemned Governor Dobbs
for failing to put down the "mobs, riots and insurrections that
prevailed. "'^5 Xhis remarkable turnabout by the assembly — it
had condemned Corbin's conduct as Granville's agent
"deplorable" just eighteen months before — serves as a testament
to Corbin's considerable political skills. Corbin continued to repre-
sent Chowan County in the General Assembly from April 1760
to May 1765; and on 19 March 1763, he was restored by Dobbs

26 MESDA

to his position as a justice in tlie colony's tiighest court of law,
with a commission as associate justice on the bench of the Eden-
ton District Superior Court. Corbin's remarkable political com-
eback was completed after the death of his old adversary Dobbs,
when new Royal Governor William Tryon proposed in 1766 to
readmit Corbin to the Governor's Council. '^'^ Corbin did not have
the opportunity to resume his council duties, however, as a severe
illness brought about his death in early 1767.

Although Corbin apparently preformed all of his govern-
mental duties exceptionally well, his negligent administration of
Earl Granville's proprietary affairs has not endeared him to poster-
ity. Indeed, North Carolina historians generally have portrayed
Corbin as a perfect example of the corrupt colonial official, who,
in the words of one historian, "grew fat upon the extortions of
his subordinates. "^^^ Historians have also charged on numerous
occasions that Corbin and the other proprietary agents, particularly
Thomas Child, sought to defraud Earl Granville through a series
of complex conspiracies, and that although these conspiracies never
quite worked as planned, the agents nevertheless grew rich as
neither fees nor remittances of any importance were sent to
Granville. ^-^^ While it is undeniable that the continual transfer
of money from agent to agent and thence to Granville certainly
invited embezzlement, proprietary correspondence reveals that
large-sum remittances to Granville were made regularly. If Corbin
or any of the other agents were guilty of embezzlement, they
evidently did not pocket the enormous sums that often have been
suggested. '-"^^ Another historian perhaps best summarized Corbin's
political career when she wrote that ' 'we are not sure that [Corbin]
did anything strictly illegal; but at the same time it is difficult
to avoid the conclusion that he was deficient in some of the
qualities that make for moral uprightness and political
stability."'^"

Corbin's primary residence throughout much of his career
seems to have been his Chowan County plantation located
"several" miles from Edenton, the exact location of which is
unknown. There are many but vague references to it throughout
the records. Some refer to it as "two or three miles" from town;
one letter mentions "Mr. Corbin's House five miles from
Edenton"; and Governor Dobbs often referred to it as "near
Edenton," or "several miles from Edenton. "^'^^ The Corbin
plantation apparently was located at the mouth of Pembroke
Creek, but Corbin also acquired large tracts of land on the "west

May, 1989 27

side of Queen Anne's Creek," and on the "northeast shore of
the Chowan River," making it difficult to determine which was
Corbin's manor plantation. ^"^^ Records indicate Corbin worked
these plantations with a total of thirty to forty-five slaves. ^'^^

On 19 April 1756 Corbin purchased the Cupola House and
its lot from Thomas Barker for "£61.5.0 Proclamation Money."
The deed described the lot as:

. . . one lot and parcel of land situate and lying and being
in Edenton known and distinguished in the new plan of
the said town by the number or figure one (1) containing
one-half acre & all Houses Buildings and Gardens. . . .'^^

Figure 4. Serving table, Edenton, 1743-33, mahogany with red cedar frame.
HOA 23 1/8", W'OA 27 1/8", DOA 18 3/4". MRF S-3034.

28

MESDA

Corbin may have leased the stmcture and lot from Thomas Barker,
one of the attorneys representing the estate of William Morton,
prior to the purchase. Deed records show that Corbin did not
own any town property at the time, but he was under pressure
from Granville and Thomas Child during this period to establish
a "proper land office" in town; apparently Corbin conducted
most of the Earl's land business through the "frontier" offices,
keeping most of the records at his plantation outside of town. '"^^
Following Child's return to London in June 1751, Granville wrote
Corbin:

Mr. Child having represented to me the necessity of having
a proper office in Edenton for the safe lodgement of my
papers & records and for your transacting my business with
decency and order; I would therefore have you forthwith
purchase some convenient lott in that town for me and
my heirs and provide bricks and other materials and that
the same may be set about as soon as the season of the
year will allow. I would have one part of the house allotted
for the clerks office with proper conveniences and the other
to serve as an apartment for yourselves where you may
commodiously transact my affairs with necessary and secure
accommodations for the reception of my papers. And for
this you may expand and charge my account about 80 to
100 sterling, but not to exceed that sum.^"^^

By April 1756, however, Corbin had not purchased a lot or built
a "proper office" as instructed; on 18 April, just one day before
Corbin purchased the Cupola House and its lot. Lord Granville
wrote Corbin tersely that he was to erect "such an office out of
[monies on] hand" and that it was to "be commodious, and made
as secure as possible against fire and other accidents. ' ' ^^^ Chowan
deed records, however, show that Corbin never purchased a lot
in the name of Granville and his heirs, and he apparently never
built the "proper office" that Lord Granville desired. The Cupola
House would have provided Corbin with a prominent town
location on the waterfront to "commodiously transact" his
patrons. If that was the case, one of the lot's various outbuildings
shown on Sauthier's 1769 Plan of Edenton could have served as
a land office.

Four months after his purchase of the Cupola House, Corbin
acquired title to the water lot directly opposite the dwelling from

May, 1989 29

the town commissioners for ten shillings. ^^"^ The deed contained
the usual provision that Corbin "improve" the lot within two
years, which he did by erecting a large private wharf in Edenton
Bay soon afterward. This deed referred to "Francis Corbin of
Edenton," suggesting that Corbin was already resident. However,
the condition and state of the Cupola House at the time Corbin
purchased the dwelling is unknown. The low purchase price of
£61.5.0 seems to suggest that the building perhaps was out of

Figure 5. Gaming table, attributed to Edenton, 1750-15, mahogany with walnut
gate frame, red oak inner frame. HOA 26 7/8", WOA 30 3/4", DOA 31 1/8"
open. I^AESDA ace. 2720.

30

MESDA

Figure 6. irnting table, attributed to Eden ton. 1750-75. mahogany with oak
drawer frames and yellow ptne bottoms, back, and inner framing. HO A 28
7/8". W'OA 36 5/8". DOA 24 1/2". MESDA ace. 3273.

repair; yet it must be remembered that Corbin purchased the
Cupola House from a good friend who represented clients living
in Great Britain that had never seen the dwelling and who
probably had no idea of the structure's real value. The purchase
price itself therefore may not have been truly indicative of the
condition of the Cupola House at that time. Editor's note: as
in the earlier instance, it was felt appropriate to add further
information about current property values, as follows. Some
properties in Edenton sold for a good deal less than Corbin's
expenditure during the same period. For example, in July 1753
the cabinetmaker John Henry Rombough sold Samuel Davis lots
85 and 86 in the New Plan, with dwellings, "houses," outhouses,
and fences for a mere i.G:A.:G. However, in the spring of 1755
Susanna Cockburne sold George Dishbrow lots 2,3, and 4 in
the New Plan, with "houses" and other features, for £198:3:0.
In the same year that Corbin bought the Cupola House, Thomas
Harrison, a merchant of Suffolk, Virginia, sold another Suffolk
man lots 3 and 4 in the Old Plan, with houses, outhouses, and

May, 1989

31

other appurtenances, for £208. These are representantive sale
prices during the decade, ranging from low to high. In 1756,
North CaroHna currency was worth approximately 56 percent of
a pound sterling. Although it is not stated in the deed, the Corbin
purchase probably was in provincial money, indicating that he
purchased the house and lot for only about £34:5 sterling. Four
years later, in Williamsburg, the dwelling of James Geddy, Sr.
was sold by his widow for 100 Virginia currency to James Geddy,
Jr., the silversmith. At that time, the house consisted of a four-
bay story-and-a-half structure, which now stands in a largely
reconstructed state on Duke of Gloucester Street. At current
exchange, the Geddy property sold for approximately £71
sterling. ^^^

Figure 7. Stair spandrel, George Blair house, Edenton. Blair probably built his
house in Eden Alley before 1763; he died in 1769- The house was razed to
make room for a medical clinic in 1937, but before it was destroyed, three of
its rooms were salvaged and installed in MESDA. The carving was executed
by the same cabinetmaker who produced the tables in figs. 5. 6, and 9-

The structure presumably would have been in good upkeep
if Corbin was renting it prior to the purchase. Although the nature
of possible repairs to the house made by Corbin is unknown, he
commissioned the construction of a wharf, which apparently was
completed by September 1758. It is thought by some that Corbin
probably had the building thoroughly remodeled to suit his taste;
in her 1965 report on the Cupola House for the Chowan County
Historical Commission, Miss Moore reasoned that:

32

MESDA

The interior trim of the Cupola House presents a special
problem. Judging by all the deeds up through the time
of Corbin's purchase, the house could hardly have been
considered extraordinary. Surely Dr. John Brickell's
description of the town in 1731 would have made a special
mention of a house as fine as this was when Corbin died,
and surely his silence indicates that it was not so fine
then. . . . Corbin bought the place at the lowest price in
its history . . . and after his death all his other Edenton
property had to be sold to pay a debt of £211.6.0 still
owing to a carpenter named Robert Kirshaw . . . the
Cupola House woodwork implies an owner with the taste
to want it, the money to pay for it (eventually), and the
reasonable explanation of enjoying it. The documentary
evidence points straight to Francis Corbin. '"^^

Regardless of Corbin's possible alterations of the Cupola
House, he was quite wealthy, owning as mentioned various tracts
of land throughout Chowan County and thirty to forty slaves. '^°
In addition, Corbin received what was described as a "handsome
and liberal allowance" from Earl Granville during his years as
proprietary agent, and he received generous fees for his other
governmental duties as well.'^' Little is known about Corbin's
mercantile partnership with John Campbell, but it may be
assumed that it was also profitable, given Campbell's business
acumen and reputation throughout the colony.'" Corbin,
therefore, had the ability to furnish the Cupola House modishly.

Editor's note: Corbin's furnishings are important to the
understanding of his taste and wealth, and for this and other
reasons, we add the following analysis of his household goods
to Mr. Cheese man 's study. The " Acct Sales of the Estate of Francis
Corbin deceased Sold at Public Vendue at Edenton the 20th of
September 1758" is quite revealing in regard to just how modish
Corbin was. We may assume that most of his furniture was locally
made, and that he had begun to bespeak work with Edenton
artisans not long after his 1750 arrival in the town. The total sale
value of the contents of the Cupola House and its outbuildings
was £336:12:10. This sum included 24 slaves, two horses, and
a riding chair. Also sold were a great variety of items, including
over seventy books and a "Parcel French Books." Corbin's library
was fairly typical of a well-to-do gentleman of the time, including
the works of Virgil, Pliny, Shakespeare, Descartes, and others.

May, 1989 33

Figure 8. Armchair, attributed to Edenton, 1743-63, mahogany with beech
rear rail, cypress glue blocks, beech slip seat. HO A 39 1/4", WO A 26 1/4"
at knee, IV' at feet. MESDA ace. 2418.

along with various histories, compilations of laws, religious
treatises, and popular novels such as Don Quixote and Gil Bias.
He owned no books of architecture. He owned a Latin dictionary
and two French grammars. In all, the library reveals a man who
was well educated.

Household movables consisted of an array of objects predict-
able for an Albemarle household of the period and level of wealth.

34

MESDA

Corbin owned 33 pewter plates, 14 dishes of the same metal,
28 china plates, 7 dishes, and a bowl, all presumably of porcelain.
Of silver, he had two waiters, a bread basket, a punchbowl, a
tankard, a coffee pot, and a dozen spoons. Some of these items
were quite substantial. The basket sold for over £18, and the bowl
for £19:13, in both instances indicating large size and heavy
weight. A "Head of Grotius" along with a similar bust of the
Bishop of Winchester, both probably casts, were included in the
amenities of the house. A dressing glass, four looking glasses,
and a small pier glass very likely represented imported wares, along
with twenty "pictures." Four pairs of andirons, three fenders,
four candlesticks, a generous completement of kitchen furniture,
gardening implements, a "Blunderbuss" and four fowlers, a
"parcel of old cudasses," and various other household items made
up the balance of the accessories.

Figure 9. Dining table, attnbuted to Edenton, 1730-73. walnut with oak gate
frame, yellow pine inner frame. HOA 27 13/15". W'OA 42 718". DOA 43"
open. MRF S-4623.

Corbin's actual household furniture consisted of "8 arm
mahogany chairs" which sold for £8: 15: 10, 2 "square Mahogany
tables" at £4, a "round" mahogany tea table at 2, 2 beds with
furniture, one at 9 and the other at £18: 16, two dressmg tables,

May, 1989

35

Figure 10. Tea table, one of a pair, Eden ton. 1750-80, mahogany. HO A 27
3/8". diameter of top 30 1/4". MRF S-12.173.

one at £3 and the other at £2:1, a desk at £5:5 and a desk-and-
bookcase at £15, 19 side chairs, 13 of which were described as
"walnut," two "smoking" chairs, a "close stool chair" which
sold for £2:15, a "small square table," an "old table," a "large
round Mahogany table" worth £2:13:6, and a "candle Stand"
which sold for £0:6:6. Shown here are ten examples of Edenton
furniture of the 1750-70 period that are representative of the sort
of pieces which Corbin might have owned, although a serving
table (fig. 4), card table (fig. 5), and writing table (fig. 6) such
as those illustrated are not reflected on the inventory. The card
table is one of a pair originally owned by Robert Jones, one of
Corbin's principal agents. The cabinetmaker who produced Jones'
tables had earlier carved the stair hall (fig. 7) of the c. 1764 house
of merchant George Blair, who purchased Corbin's candle stand.
The "8 arm mahogany chairs" are well represented by the
example in fig. 8, which indeed was originally one of a set of
armchairs. The "2 square mahogany tables" very likely indicated

36

MESDA

a matched pair of dining tables such as that in fig. 9. "Square"
in early inventories often actually meant "rectangular," and sets
of dining tables were common in the Albemarle. The "round
mahogany tea table" was purchased by Samuel Johnston, who
almost certainly owned the Edenton table shown in fig. 10,
although Johnston's table illustrated here is one of a pair. Corbin's
walnut side chairs very likely followed familiar local work that

Figure 11. Side chair, Edenton, 1755-75, mahogany with yellow pine. HO A
37 1/4", WO A 20 1/8". MRF S-8483 .

May, 1989

37

was executed in a conservative version of the Chinese taste, as
we see in figs. 11 and 12. The "smoking" chairs were corner
chairs; the example illustrated in fig. 13 was owned by Samuel
Dickinson, who purchased the house in 1777. The "close stool
chair" would have been similar to the smoking chairs, but with
a much deeper skirt. Although a simple affair, the Edenton

Figure 12. Side chair, Edenton, 1760-90, walnut with cypress and yellow pine
blocks. HO A 37 5/8", W'OA 20 3/4", DO A 13 11/16". MRF S-3007. This
chair descended in the family of Samuel Dickinson, the doctor who purchased
the Cupola House from the estate of Francis Corbin in 1777.

38

MESDA

dressing tabic in fig. 14 could well have answered Corbin's sale
description, judging from the modest £2:1 that one table brought.

Figure 13- Corner chair. Edenton, 1760-90. wahmt with white pine slip- seat
support, poplar front block. HOA U 1/16". W'OA 18 11/16". MRFS-3008.
This chair has the same history as that illustrated in fig. 12.

Corbin maintained a staff of four to six slaves on the
premises. '^-^ He no doubt found the Cupola House ideally
situated, being just over a block from the courthouse where Corbin
sat as an assistant justice, and its location on Edenton's water-
front, with its own private wharf, allowed Corbin ready access
to water transportation as well.

Despite his poor relations with the inhabitants west of the
Chowan River and with Governor Dobbs, Corbin was respected
and apparently held in high esteem by his contemporaries in
Edenton and Chowan County. As we have seen, the freeholders
sent him to the General Assembly as their representative during

May, 1989

39

four consecutive years in the early 1760s; Reverend James Moir
of Edenton, commenting on the political struggle between Dobbs
and Corbin, wrote in 1763:

His excellency [Gov. Dobbs] seems to have a natural anti-
pathy to everyone that acts uprightly in a public office.
Mr. Francis Corbin, the Earl of Granville's Agent in this
Province, I dare say acted conscientiously. I had frequent
opportunity of observing him; His Excellency appointed
a General Assembly at Edenton to demolish the said
Corbin, but his efforts proved ineffectual . . . .^^^

An Anglican, Corbin was prominent in the affairs of St. Paul's
Church, serving as a vestryman and lay reader during the 1750s. '^^
Corbin repeatedly promised to use his influence to have the church

Figure 14. Side table, attributed to Chowan River basin, 1740-60, walnut with
cypress. HOA 27 1/2", WOA 27 1/8", DOA 20 3/4". MRF S-4150.

40

MESDA

building completed; construction had begun in 1736. Corbin
failed to accomplish much with this; the church, however, was
completed except for a tower in 1760.^^^ Personally, Corbin
referred to himself as the "Honorable Francis Corbin, Esquire
and Gentleman." His health was poor, perhaps affected by
Edenton's climate, and he was apparently often ill for long
durations. Corbin mentioned in a letter to Lord Granville of 18
February 1754 that: "I have been in a bad state of health for
a considerable time past. ..." and one month later he wrote:
"This has been the most sickly and mortal season for many years;
near one-half of the people in & about here [Edenton] are dead;
two & three out of a house, and some whole families; and our
misfortune is, the disorder is not yet over."'" After an illness
of over three months, Corbin recovered, writing Granville on 13
April: "I thank God I begin to recover my health. ..." However,
Corbin was so weakened by the unidentified sickness that he could
not make the circuit ride out to Enfield, Hillsborough, and
Salisbury that summer. '^^

In October 1761 Francis Corbin married Jean Innes of New
Hanover County, the widow of Colonel James Innes (d. 1759)
who had served briefly as one of Corbin's co-agents prior to his
distinguished service in the French and Indian war. '^^ Jean Innes
was apparently many years Corbin's senior, and she was described
by a contemporary as "not of the best character or most amiable
manners. ""'O She was, however, very wealthy. The Innes plan-
tation. Point Pleasant, stood on a magnificent bluff overlooking
the Cape Fear River, and it consisted of over 1,600 acres along
the river banks, worked by 100 slaves.'^' The shrewd Mrs. Innes
retained control of this estate, as specified by the terms of a lengthy
pre-nuptial agreement between Corbin and herself which stated
that Point Pleasant was to be "for her separate use and benefit
exclusive of the said Francis Corbin . . . the same in any part
thereof shall not be subject ot the control, disposition, debts,
forfitures, engagements, incumbrances, or contracts of the said
Francis Corbin her intended husband. ""^^ Likewise, Corbin kept
exclusive control of his Chowan estate, but upon his death the
estate was to descend to "the use and behalf of the said Jean
Innes his intended wife for and during the term of her natural
life.""'^ After her death the estate was to revert to Corbin's heirs.
The agreement also specified that the Cupola House be rented
out during the absence of the Corbins, and later records reveal
that Dr. Walter Ferguson, a prominent Edenton physician of the

May, 1989 41

1760s and 1770s, managed Corbin's Chowan estate while Corbin
was at Point Pleasant. However, no rental records concerning the
Cupola House were found. Corbin himself was often in Edenton
during 1761-65, and he presumably stayed at the Cupola House
when in town.'^^ After 1765 Corbin spent most of his time at
Point Pleasant; he died there in early 1767. According to Janet
Schaw, a visitor to Point Pleasant in the 1770s, he was buried
at the bottom of the lawn on the plantation, not far from the
grave of Colonel Innes.'^^

Corbin died before making a last will and testament, and his
wife qualified as administratrix on 27 October 1767, giving
security of £5,000 "for the true administration of the estate. "'^^
Although most of Francis Corbin's estate records have not
survived, it appears that the estate carried a certain burden of
debt, and Mrs. Corbin received permission from the court on 24
June 1768 to "sell so much of the said deceased's personal estate
as will pay his just debts. "'^■' During that summer Jean Corbin
repeatedly advertised the upcoming estate sale in the Virginia
Gazette. '^^^ One sale was held on Tuesday, 20 September 1768
and an additional sale was conducted on 3 November. The
numerous items in Corbin's personal estate, including 26 slaves,
were sold for over £1,200. The account of the sale reveals that
Edenton's and Chowan's most prominent citizens attended the
auction, which was held on the grounds of the Cupola House
lot. Samuel Johnston came from Hayes, Joseph Blount from
Mulberry Hill, Richard Brownrigg from Wingfield, Daniel Earle
from Brandon. Among the Edentonians at the sale were Joseph
Hewes, Jasper Charlton, and George Blair. '^^ The Cupola House
once again stood vacant, destined to serve as Jean Corbin's rental
property. The occupancy of the Cupola House's most controversial
owner had come to an end.

Although Edenton lost the honor of being the seat of the
colony's government to New Bern in 1746, the town prospered
greatly during the years the Cupola House served as Corbin's
townhouse. At the eve of the American Revolution the town
consisted of approximately 177 dwellings and a diverse contingent
of artisans. The waterfront seethed with activity. Edenton's
thriving maritime commerce attracted money and men of
influence, and a significant amount of construction took place
during this period.'""^

In June 1769 C. J. Sauthier, a French cartographer commis-
sioned by Governor William Tryon to prepare a series of maps

42 MESDA

of North Carolina's towns, completed a map of Edenton. The
detailed plan shows that Edenton extended back about eight
blocks north from the waterfront; the map clearly depicts the
Cupola House and its lot. Six outbuildings are shown upon the
half-acre lot, four standing behind the house on the north and
two in front. The largest building, probably the kitchen, stood
immediately to the rear of the Cupola House, juxtaposed at a
right angle with the northwest side of the house. Later records
indicate that the kitchen was a large two-story brick structure,
and the servant's quarters were probably located on the second
floor above the cooking area. Part of this structure, or one of the
other dependencies, may also have served as a coach house, as
Mrs. Corbin's inventory later listed a "pleasure carriage" in storage
at Edenton. 1^' Immediately behind the kitchen stood two much
smaller structures, perhaps a privy and a smokehouse. A small
dependency, perhaps an office, also stood in the center of the
lot on King Street. On the southern portion of the lot in front
of the Cupola House, Sauthier depicted a garden area running
the length of the lot south to Water Street, where two small
buildings stood on the southeast and southwest corners of the
lot. Across Water Street was the lot's wharf, jutting into Edenton
Bay. In all, the Cupola House must have been a profitable piece
of rental property for Jean Corbin during the late 1760s and early
1770s.

As administratrix of her late husband's financially troubled
estate, Jean Innes Corbin became involved in a number of
lawsuits, as both plaintiff and defendant, while attempting to
settle the estate. ^^^ One of these lawsuits is of particular interest
to the debate surrounding the question of whether or not Francis
Corbin extensively remodeled the Cupola House. In November
1770 Robert Kirshaw, an Edenton carpenter, filed suit against
"Jean Corbin, administratrix of all & Singular the Goods Chatties
Rights & Credits which were of Francis Corbin, Esquire, deceased"
seeking to recover "six hundred pounds Proclamation Money
which to him she owes."'^^ Little is known of Robert Kirshaw,
who died in 1772. His name first appears in the Chowan County
records about 1749-50, and he seems to have been a man of very
modest means. Apparently illiterate, Kirshaw did not own any
real property in Edenton or Chowan County. '^'' Nothing is known
of his work, except that he was not a well-known artisan in the
area. His name does not appear in newspaper advertisements or
apprentice indentures. In any event, "Robert Kirshaw vs. Francis

May, 1989 43

Corbin's Adm." came before the Edenton District Superior Court
on 5 May 1772, and a twelve-man jury awarded Kirshaw
211.6.0.'^^ The court minutes, however, unfortunately do not
discuss the nature of Corbin's debt to Kirshaw, and Robert
Kirshaw's deposition apparently has not survived. Since Kirshaw
was not engaged in any known business transactions with Corbin
other than possible carpentry work, the suit suggests that Kirshaw
indeed performed services of that trade for which he was never
paid. It is possible, then, that Corbin commissioned Kirshaw to
renovate the Cupola House and build the lot's wharf. Unfor-
tunately, surviving documentary sources provide no description
of Kirshaw's presumed work. As a result of the jury's verdict,
Jean Corbin was forced to sell several tracts of Francis Corbin's
Chowan County lands, including the plantation at the mouth
of Pembroke Creek and Strawberry Island, to raise the money
needed to pay Kirshaw, who died shortly after winning the suit.'^<^
Jean Corbin died at Point Pleasant in 1775, and ownership
of the Cupola House reverted to Francis Corbin's next-of-kin as
stipulated by the marriage agreement of October 1761.'^^ During
the eight years (1767-75) the Cupola House was solely owned by
Jean Corbin, it apparently served as rental property, as nothing
in the records even suggests that Mrs. Corbin ever utilized the
house for herself. No records were found, however, that reveal
details regarding leases of the Cupola House during the period.
After Jean Corbin's death, administration of Francis Corbin's
estate was granted to Edmund Corbin, apparently Corbin's
brother, who therefore qualified as his next-of-kin.'^^ A
Wilmington merchant and loyalist, Edmund Corbin sold the
Cupola House and its lot and adjoining water lot and wharf to
Dr. Samuel Dickinson on 7 February 1777 for £400. The deed
description read:

... a certain lott or half acre of land together with the
water lott wharf Houses tenaments Buildings and Appur-
tenances and Improvements situate lying & being in the
Town of Edenton in Plan of said Town known and distin-
quished by Lott No. 1. . . .'^^

The significantly increased purchase price reflected the value of
the water lot and wharf, the initial stages of Revolutionary War
inflation, and possible improvements to the property by Corbin.
Like Corbin, Samuel Dickinson was also a prominent and con-

44 MESDA

troversial figure during his lifetime; the Cupola House was to
serve as the residence of his family and descendants for the ensuing
14 1 years.

FOOTNOTES

1. See, among others, Thomas Tileston Waterman and Frances Benjamin
Johnston, The Early Architecture of North Carolina (Chapel Hill: Univer-
sity of North Carolina Press, 1941); Henry Chandlee Forman, The Architec-
ture of the Old South: The Medieval Style. iJSJ-iSJO (Cambridge, Mass:
Harvard University Press, 1948); Thomas Tileston Waterman, The Dwell-
ings of Colonial America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolma Press,
1950); Hugh Morrison, Early American Architecture: From the First Colonial
Settlements to the National Period (^e^ York: Oxford University Press,
1952); John V. AUcott, Colonial Homes in North Carolina (Raleigh, N.
C: Carolina Tercentary Commission, 1963); Lawrence Wodehouse,
Architecture in North Carolina. 1700-1900 (Raleigh, N. C: North Carolina
Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, 1970).

2. On 10 March 1918 ten citizens of Edenton and the surrounding community
met "to organize an association for the purchase and preservation of the
Cupola House, and the Cupola House Library and Museum Association
was then organized as a stock company. Effons to preserve four other historic
buildings in North Carolina predate the formation of the Cupola House
Association; however, these were the work of either previously organized
groups or various local chapters of national organizations. The Cupola House
Association was the first community-organized agency established to save
a specific structure in North Carolina. Minutes of the Cupola House
Association, 1918-49, 1; Cupola House Association files, Edenton; A. L.
Honeycutt. Jr., Supervisor, Restoration and Preservation Services Branch,
Archaeology and Historic Preservation Section, State Division of Archives
and History, inteviews with author, 24 Oct. and 5 Nov. 1979; hereafter
cited as Honeycutt interviews.

3. Chowan Herald (Edenton). 18 Aug. 1966; Virginian Pilot (Norfolk. V-i.).
10 Oct. 1965.

May, 1989 45

4. C.J. Sauthier, \769Pianofthe Town and Port of Edenton, North Carolina,
photostatic copy, Nonh Carolina State Archives, Raleigh; Donald H. Parker,
landscape architect, Williamsburg, Va., interview with author, 5 Dec. 1979,
hereafter cited as Parker interview.

5. See David Leroy Corbitt, ed.. Explorations, Descriptions, and Attempted
Settlements of Carolina, 1584 to 7^90 (Raleigh, N. C: State Department
of Archives and History, 1948); David Beers Quinn, ed.. The Roanoke
Voyages, 1584-1590 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1955); Thomas C.
Parramore, Cradle of the Colony: The History of Chowan County and
Edenton, North Carolina, (Edenton: Chamber of Commerce, 1967), 5-10.

6. Hugh T. Lefler and William S. Powell, Colonial North Carolina: A History
(New York: Charles Scriner's Sons, 1973), 29-32; William S. Powell, ed..
Ye Countie of Albemarle in Carolina: A Collection of Documents,
1664-1675 (Raleigh, N. C: State Department of Archives and History,
1958), xiii-xxiv. For desciptions of the Chowan region from some of the
Virginia explorations, see Hugh T. Lefler, ed.. North Carolina History told
by Contemporaries (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1956),
12-13.

7. Lefler and Powell, Colonial North Carolina, 31-2; Powell, Ye Countie of
Albemarle , xiii-xxiii.

8. Lefler and Powell, Colonial North Carolina, 32; Powell, Ye Countie of
Albemarle , xxiii. For a bibliographical sketch of Captain Samuel Stevens,
see Beth G. Crabtree, North Carolina Governors, 1585-1968 (Raleigh: State
Department of Archives and History, 1968), 5-6.

9. Actually, the settled region of the Albermarle mistakenly was omitted from
the 1663 charter, which granted the territory extending from 31 ° to 36°
north latitude and stretching from ocean to ocean to eight men who had
made considerable contributions to King Charles ILs restoration. The error
was corrected by a second charter granted in 1665, which established the
northern Carolina boundary as approximately the same as the present-day
North Carolina-Virginia state line. For an account of the two charters and
biographical sketches of the eight Lords Proprietors, see William S. Powell,
The Carolina Charter of 1665 (Raleigh, N. C.: State Department of Arhives
and History, 1954). For a biographical sketch of Governor William Drum-
mond, see Crabtree, North Carolina Governors, 3-4.

10. David Leroy Corbitt, The Formation of the North Carolina Counties,
1663-1943 (Raleigh, N. C: State Department of Archives and History,
1969), xxiv. The precinct was named in honor of Anthony Ashley Cooper,
one of the original Lords Proprietors.

1 1 . Corbitt, Formation, xxiv; Lefler and Powell, Colonial North Carolina, 44-5,
Powell, Ye Countie of Albemarle, xxi-xxxii; Parramore, Cradle of the
Colony, 12. Chowan "Precinct" became Chowan County in 1739. Corbitt,
Formation , xx.

12. See Margaret M. Hofmann, comp. and ed.. Province of North Carolina,
1663-1729: Abstracts of Land Patents (Weldon, N. C: Roanoke News
Company, 1979). This extensive research effort indicates that the region
may have been more heavily settled than previously has been believed.

46 MESDA

13. J. R. B. Hathaway, ed., North Carolina Historical and Geneaological
Register, 2 (1901):350, 358; 3 (1902):200-2, 207, hereafter cited as
NCH&GR; Chowan County Deeds, Office of the Register of Deeds,
Chowan County Courthouse, Edenton, Book W-1, 6; Elizabeth Vann
Moore, Edenton, interviews with author, 24-27 Sept. 1979; hereafter cited
as Moore interviews. Hoskins's land patent itself has not survived, but is
referred to in later deeds.

14. NCH&GR, 2:350, 398; Chowan County Deeds, Bk. W-1, 6; Moore
interviews.

15. Ihid.. For a biographical sketch of Nathaniel Chevin (d. 1720) see William
S. Powell, ed.. Dictionary of North Carolina Biography (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1979- ), l(A-C), 366.

16. Chowan County Deeds, Bk. B-1, 62-3. Thomas Cary (d. 1720), Deputy
Governor and Council President, was born in England and became a
successful merchant in Charleston in the early eighteenth century. In 1710
Cary lost his political skirmish with Edward Hyde for the governorship of
North Carolina and "became an open and declared rebel and brought
together a gang of tramps and rioters in open rebellion against Hyde."
Governor Spotswood of Virginia came to Hyde's assistance, captured Hyde,
and ended the rebellion. For a biographical sketch of Thomas Cary, see
Powell, N. C. Biography, 1:338-9.

17. Walter Clark, ed.. The State Records of North Carolina, 16 vols, 11-26
(Winston and Goldsboro, N. C: State of North Carolina, 1895-1906),
25:168; Parramore, Cradle of the Colony, 15.

18. Chowan County Deeds, Bk. W-1, 6; Moore interviews. Thomas Peterson
(d. 1715) was a merchant and citizen of Chowan; his father had emigrated
from Maryland in 1677.

19. Edward Moseley's 1733 Map of North Carolina, a photocopy of which is
in the N. C. State Archives, clearly depicts the Virginia Road leading to
Edenton.

20. The vestry of St. Paul's parish was established in 1701 by the Society for
the Propagation of the Gospel and is the oldest in the state. Its first church
building was located east of Edenton on what is now Hayes plantation and
served the parish until construction began on the building that stands in
Edenton today. Parramore, Cradle oj the Colony, 14-15.

21. William S. Price, Jr., ed.. North Carolina Higher Court Minutes. 1709-1723,
vol. 5 of The Colonial Records of North Carolina (Raleigh, N. C: Division
of Archives and History, 1975), xiii, 147-8.

22. Elizabeth Van Moore, Report on the Cupola House for the Edenton and
Chowan County Histoncal Commission (N.p.: Privately printed, 1965),
1-3; Parramore, Cradle of the Colony, 15; Clark, State Records, 25:175-8.

23. Moore, Cupola House Report, 1-3; Moore interviews.

24. Clark, State Records, 25:175-8.

25. Ibid.

26. Price, Minutes, xiii.

27. Ibid. ; Charles Christopher Crittenden, The Commerce of North Carolina,
1765-1789 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 70-1, 77-8; Harry

May, 1989 47

Roy Merrens, Colonial North Carolina in the Eighteenth Century: A Study
in Historical Geography (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1964), 147-8. In exports, approximately 2/5 of the total tonnage cleared
Port Roanoke for the West Indies, 1 / 3 sailed up the coast to New England,
New York, and Baltimore, and 1/5 cleared for England. For imports, 1/2
of the tonnage came from New England, 1/4 from the West Indies, 1/5
from Great Britain, and 1/5 came from Spain and other ports. In the last
six months of 1729 more than 60 vessels cleared Edenton. Parramore, Cradle
of the Colony, 19-20.

28. William Byrd, Wistones of the Dividing Line Betwixt Virginia and North
Carolina, ed. W. K. Boyd (Raleigh, N. C: North Carolina Historical
Commission, 1929), 96-8; Parramore, Cradle of the Colony, 16-18.

29. John Brickell, The Natural History of North Carolina (1737, reprint,
Murfreesboro, N. C: Johnson Publishing Co., 1968), 8. Dr. Brickell, an
Irishman, also wrote a lively portrayal of Edenton's social life in the 1730s:
town inhabitants apparently had no trouble finding time for gambling,
cock-fighting, hunting, fishing, wrestling, dancing, and horse-racing, "for
which they have Race-Paths near every town, and in many parts of the
country."

30. Parramore, Cradle of the Colony, 22-3.

31. Chowan County Deeds, Bk. C-1, Pt. 2, 1.

32. J. Bryan Grimes, "Some Short Colonial Biographies," North Carolina Day
Programs (Raleigh, N. C: Edwards and Broughton, 1904), 81; John L.
Cheney, Jr., ed.. North Carolina Government, 138^1984: A Narrative and
Statistical History . . . (Raleigh, N. C: North Carolina Department of the
Secretary of State, 1975).

33. Byrd, Dividing Line, Al .

34. Chowan County Deeds, Bk. C-1, Pt. 2, 1.

35. P. Hartmus, Plan of the Town of Edenton, photostatic copy, N. C. State
Archives.

36. Chowan County Deeds, Bk. C-1, Pt. 2, 1.

37. Ibid.

38. Ibid.

39- Ibid., Pt. 2 (numerous listings).

40. Ibid, Pt. 2, 40.

41. Ibid.

42. For biographies of Christopher Gale (ca. 1680-1734), see Samuel A. Ashe
and others, eds.. Biographical History of North Carolina: From Colonial
Times to the Present, 8 vols. (Greensboro, N. C. : Charles L. Van Noppen,
1905-1917), 1:292-3; Marshall Delancey Wood, Builders of the Old North
State, ed. Sarah McCulloh Lemmon (Raleigh, N. C: Litho Industries, Inc.,
1968), 21-5; Ursula Fogleman Loy and Pauline Marion Worthy, eds.,
Washington and the Pamlico (Washington, N. C: Washington-Beaufort
County Bicentennial Commission, 1976), 414-16.

43. Gale's plantation on Queen Anne's Creek is shown on Moseley's 1733 Map
of North Carolina.

44. New England Historical and Geneaological Review, 47 (1893):350.

48 MESDA

45. "The Indians of Southern Virginia, 1650-1711: Depositions in the Virginia
and North CaroHna Boundary Case," Virginia Magazine of History and
Biography, 7 (April 1900):347-8.

46. Hugh F. Rankin, Upheaval in Albemarle: The Story of Culpeper's
Rebellion, 1673-1689 (Raleigh, N. C: Carolina Charter Tercentary
Commission, 1962), 73-4.

47. Ibid.

48. Ibid., 74.

49. Ibid., 41.

30. Cheney, North Carolina Government, 11-16.

5 1 Mattie Erma Edwards Parker, ed. , North Carolina Higher-Court Records,

1670-1696, vol. 2 of The Colonial Records of North Carolina (Raleigh, N.

C: State Department of Archives and History, 1968), 11-18.

52. Louis des Cognets, Jr., comp. English Duplicates of Lost Virginia Records
(Princeton: Louis des Cognets, Jr., 1958), 281, 293.

53. Jacqueline H. Wolf, "Patents and Tithables in Proprietary North Carolina,

1663-1729," North Carolina Historical Review, 56 (]\A^ 1979):273.

54. Mattie Erma Edwards Parker, North Carolina Higher Court Records,
1697-1701, vol 3 of The Colonial Records of North Carolina (Raleigh,
N. C: State Department of Archives and History, 1971), 34-5.

55. Wolf, "Patents," 273.

56. Richard Sanderson, Sr., served on the Anglican vestry of Currituck Parish
from the time it was organized until his death in 1718, and he supported
the establishment of the Anglican Church and the imposition of political
disabilities on dissenters during their political struggles of the early 1700s.
As for his known children , other than Richard , Jr. , Joseph (d . 1 746) became
a leading citizen of Currituck and had seven children; daughter Cesiah
married Henry Woodhouse, and they had a son, Hezekiah; and daughter
Susanna married first Benjamin Tullie, a Currituck ship owner, and second,
one Erwin. Currituck, Pasquotank, and Perquimans Wills and Estates
Papers; Colonial Court Records, Estates Papers, Wills, Sanderson folders,
N. C. State Archives.

57. Price, Minutes, 7

58. Ibid., 170.

59. Ibid., 190, 214, 243.

60. Chowan County Deeds, Bk. B-1, 577.

61 . Cognets, English Duplicates, 281-94. Sanderson, Jr. also captained the sloop
Samuel of North Carolina (3 tons) owned by Henry Slade and the sloop
Adventure of North Carolina (10 tons) owned by brother-in-law Benjamin
Tullie, among others.

62. Parker, Records, 3:101, 198.

63. Ibid., 198, 218.

64. Price, Minutes, 482-3.

65. David Stick, The Outer Banks of North Carolina, U84-1938 (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1958), 32, 289, 314.

May, 1989 49

6G. lbid.\ Secretary of State Papers, Wills, vol. 27, 62, N. C. State Archives;
also see the Hayes Collection (microfilm). Southern Historical Collection,
University of North Carolina Library, Chapel Hill, Reel 1, folders 1-6.

67. Stick, Outer Banks, 314; Sanderson's fleet also included at one time the
Lark (10 tons), and the Thomas (8 tons). In his West Indies trade he dealt
with an apparent kinsman, Basil Sanderson, an Antigua shipmaster and
trader. Profits of 30(y were not uncommon for a successful voyage and cargo
transfer in the early 18th century. See Chowan County Personal Accounts,
1720-9, N. C. State Archives.

68. Stick, Outer Banks, 314.

69. Price, Minutes, 73; Secretary of State Papers, Wills, 21:G2.

70. Price, Minutes, 75.

71. Parker, Records, 1:1')').

11. Cheney, North Carolina Government, 16, 29.

73. Virginia Magazine of History and Biography , 4 (July 1896):85.

74. Chowan County Deeds, Bk. F-1, 204. Ruth Laker Minge Sanderson was
a daughter of Benjamin Laker (d. 1701) and widow of James Minge (d.
1724). Her sister, Sarah, widow of Thomas Harvey (d. 1699) married
Christopher Gale. Their son. Miles, was a sea captain, apparently employed
at times by Sanderson; Miles married Hannah Yeats of Boston and lived
for a time in New England. Moore interviews.

75. See Ruth Sanderson's will in J. Bryan Grimes, ed.. Abstracts of North
Carolina Wills (Raleigh, N. C: E. M. Uzzel, 1910), 327.

76. Richard Sanderson III, captain of many of his father's ships, died in 1737;
his widow and administratrix, Hannah, sold much of his estate to discharge
debts. Grace (d. 1744) married Tullie Williams of Albermarle, and Elizabeth
was married thrice: first to John Crisp, son of Nicholas Crisp (d. 1727) of
Chowan, then to Thomas Pollock, son of Governor Thomas Pollock, and
finally to Samuel Scolley of New England. Bertie and Perquimans Estates
Papers, Wills; Secretary of State Papers, Colonial Court Records; Estates
Papers, Sanderson folders, N. C. State Archives.

77. Richard Sanderson IV (d. 1772), owner of the sloop Charming Betsy and
other ships, married Elizabeth Barkliff in 1755; they lived on a plantation
(perhaps the original homestead) in Perquimans. Their son, Richard V (d.
1804), married Sarah Ryan and later Martha Puga, establishing a large
plantation near Durant's Neck in Perquimans. Richard V's son, Richard
VI, died without heirs in 1816, and the Sanderson estate in Perquimans
became the object of numerous law suits filed by his brothers and sisters.
Perquimans County Estates Papers, Sanderson folders, N. C. State Archives.

78. Chowan County Deeds, Bk. C-1, Pt. 2, 40.

79. Ibid., 1, 36, 40.

80. Ibid., 52.

81. If so, the Crisps did not occupy the dwelling for long. John Crisp died
shortly after their marriage, and Elizabeth Sanderson Crisp moved to Bertie
County after she married Thomas Pollack. Bertie and Perquimans Estates
Papers, Wills; Secretary of State Papers; Sanderson folders, N. C. State
Archives.

50 MESDA

82. Chowan County Deeds, Bk. C-1, Pt. 2, 52.

8.V The Edenton values were derived from entries in Chowan County Deed
Book C-1, pages 43, 44, and 63 respectively. The sale price of the Brush
house is courtesy of Patricia Gibbs, Historian, Department of Research,
Colonial Williamsburg Foundation; colonial exchange rates may be found
in John J. McCusker, Money and Exchange in Europe and America,
1660-177}: A Handbook (Chapel Hill, UNC Press, 1978)]; Moore, Cupo/a
House Report, 9-10; Moore interviews.

84. William L. Saunders, ed.. The Colonial Records of North Carolina, 10
vols. (Raleigh, N. C: State of North Carolina, 1886-90) 2:497-9.

85. Ibid.

86. Ibid.

87. Ibid., 3:30, 122.

88. Ibid., 30.

89. She may have been related to the Badham family of early Edenton. Moore
interviews.

90. Adam Cockburne's deposition of 10 January 1726 referred to the dwell-
ing as "Mr. Dunston's House." See NCH&iGR, 3 (1902):229-31 .

91. Chowan County Wills (original), John Dunston Folder, N. C. State
Archives.

92. Chowan County Deeds, Bk. C-1, Pt. 2. 63.

93. Ibid., 75.

94. Martha Dunston (d. 1736) never remarried, although she apparently had
two more children after her husband's death. In all there were four
Dunston children: sons Barnaby Healy and Richard William, both of
whom were joiners in Bertie, and daughters Elenor and Mary. Moore in-
terviews; Chowan County Deeds, Bk. E-1, 319.

95. Chowan County Deeds, Bk. C-1. Pt. 2, 77.

96. Ibid., Bk. H-1, 97-8.

97. Ibid., Bk. C-1, Pt., 77; Bk. H-1, 94-6; Chowan County Miscellaneous
Papers, 20 vols., 2:92, N. C. State Archives.

98. See Oscar Bark, Jr., and Hugh T. Lefler, Colonial Amenca, 2nd. ed. (New
York: MacMillan Co., 1970), 360-5.

99. Albemarle County Papers, 2:66, N. C. State Archives.

100. Chowan County Deeds, Bk. H-1, 94-6.

101. Ibid., Bk. A-1, 99. This lot was vacant, however, when granted by the
commissioners of Edenton to Montgomery in 1742.

102. Chowan County Deeds, Bk. H-1, 94-6. William Monon's sister, Elizabeth,
was the wife of Reverend William Graham, also of Northumberland
County.

103. Chowan County Deeds, Bk. H-1, 94-6. The Grahams had the Pecks pay
all the expenses of hiring Messrs. Barker, Cathcart, and Granden, even
though Elizabeth Graham was the administratrix of her brother's estate.

104. BnckcW, Natural History, 14.

105 . Roben W. Ramsey, Carolina Cradle: Settlement of the Northwest Carolina
Frontier. 1747-1762 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,

May, 1989 51

1964), 6; see also E. Merton Coulter, The Granville District (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1914). For a brief biographical sketch
of John Carteret (1690-1763), Earl of Granville, see Alan Valentine, The
Bntish Establishment, 1760-1784: An Eighteenth-Century Biographical
Dictionary, 2 vols. (Norman, Ok: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970),
1:150-1.

106. Powell, N. C. Biography, 1:431-2. The author also thanks Mr. George
Stevenson of the North Carolina State Archives for kindly sharing his
research on Francis Corbin.

107. Powell, N. C. Biography, 1:431-2; Granville District Papers, 1729-1780
(microfilm copy from the Marquis of Bath's Library, Longleat Library),
N. C. State Archives, citeci with permission from Lord Bath.

108. NCH&GR, 3:239-42. Col. Edward Moseley (d. 1749), President of the
Governor's Council, Acting Governor, Speaker of the Assembly, ans
Surveyor General of the Province, was originally a resident of Chowan
and Edenton; he surveyed the original town plan in 1712. In 1730 he
moved to New Hanover County where he acquired and extensive estate.
His antecedents are unknown, but he was probably a member of the
Moseley family of Princess Anne County, Virginia. See William S. Price,
Jr., "Men of Good Estates: Wealth Among North Carolina's Royal
Councillors," North Carolina Historical Review, 49 (Jan. 1972):71-82.

109. NCH&GR, 3:241-2.

110. South Carolina Gazette (Charleston), 16 Dec. 1745; Powell, N. C.
Biography, VA^l.

111. Ramsey, Carolina Cradle, 6, 23.

112. NCH&GR, 3:241; Granville District Papers.

113. Powell, N. C. Biography, 1:432; Granville District Papers.

114. Ibid.

115. Saunders, Colonial Records, 4:925-6.

116. Ibid., 925-50. Gabriel Johnston (1699-1752) served as governor for
eighteen years (1734-52). Blackwell P. Robinson, The Eive Royal Governors
of North Carolina, 1729-1773 (Raleigh, N. C: Carolina Charter Tercentary
Commission, 1963), 13-26.

117. Powell, N. C. Biography, 1:432; Granville District Papers.

118. Chowan County Deeds, Bk. H-1, 213-16; Bk. Q-1, 11-14; New Hanover
County Deeds, Bk. E, 88-94.

119- Gabriel Johnston to Lord Granville, 10 Nov. 1750, Granville District
Papers.

120. John Campbell to Granville, 18 May 1749; Johnston to Granville, 5 Mar.

1751, Granville District Papers. For Campbell's biography, see Powell,
N. C. Biography, 1:315-16.

121. Johnston to Granville, 5 Mar. 1751, Granville District Papers.

122. Coulter, Granville District, 33-56. Granville rented his lands upon
payment of three shillings steding followed by an annual rent of three
shillings sterling or four shillings proclamation money for each 100 acres
granted.

52 MESDA

123. Coulter, Granville District, 33-56; William S. Powell, James K. Huhta,
and Thomas J. Farnham, comps. and eds.. The Regulators in North
Carolina: A Docur/ientary History, 1759-1776 (Raleigh, N. C: State
Department of Archives and History, 1971), xv-xxvii, 4-15.

124. Granville to Francis Corbin and Benjamin Wheatley, 19july 1734, 8 Aug.
1754, Granville District Papers.

125. Adelaide L. Fries and others, eds.. Records of the Moravians in North
Carolina, 11 vols. (Raleigh, N. C: North Carolina Historical Commis-
sion, 1922-69), 2:517-18.

126. Powell, jV. C. Biography, 1:432; for a complete listing of Corbin's political
offices, see Cheney, North Carolina Government.

Ill . Arthur Dobbs to Granville, 29 Nov. 1755, Granville District Papers.

128. Granville to Corbin and Wheatley. 19july 1754, 8 Aug. 1754, Granville
District Papers.

129. Saunders, Colonial Records, 5:1088-94; Joseph Kelly and John L. Bridges,
History of Edgecombe County (Raleigh, N. C: Edwards and Broughton,
1920), 75-83; Coulter, Granville District, 33-56; Dobbs to Thomas Child,
5 Feb. 1759, Granville District Papers.

130. Powell, N. C. Biography, 1:432; Saunders, Colonial Records, 5: 778-81,
6:292-300.

131. Powell, N. C. Biography, 1:432; Saunders, Colonial Records, 5:lvi-lix,
6:292-300; Turner and Bridges, Edgecombe County, 75-83.

132. Saunders, Colonial Records, 5:lvi-lix, 6:292-300; Turner and Bridges,
Edgecombe County, 80-1.

133. Saunders, Colonial Records, 5:lix, 6:292-300; Powell, N. C. Biography,
1:432.

134. Powell, N. C. Biography, 1:432; Desmond Clark, Arthur Dobbs, Esquire.
1689-1765 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1957), 155-7.

135. Saunders, Colonial Records, 5:lvi-lix; 6:292-300.

136. Powell, N. C. Biography, 1:432; Saunders, Colonial Records, 7:159.

137. Turner and Bridges, Edgecombe County, 79.

138. Coulter, Granville District, 33-56; Turner and Bridges, Edgecombe
County, 75-83.

139. Granville District Papers. Much of the money was sent to Granville in
Virginia currency through Virginia governor Robert Dinwiddle. North
Carolina currency was virtually worthless in England, and Granville would
not accept it. See R. A. Brock, ed.. The Official Records of Robert
Dinwiddle, 2 vols. (Richmond, Va.: Virginia Historical Society, 1933-4),
index.

140. Janet Sch^w, Journal of a Lady of Quality, ed. Evangeline Walker Andrews
and Charles McClean Andrews (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press,
1921), 287.

141. Granville to Corbin and Wheatley, 18 Apr. 1756, Granville District Papers;
Saunders, Colonial Records, 6:298-9.

142. Chowan County Deeds, Bk. H-1, 172-3, 213-16; Bk. L-1, 22-6; Price,
"Men of Good Estates," 71-82. In his later marriage agreement with Jean

May, 1989 53

Innes, however, Corbin only mentioned his Pembroke-Strawberry Island
lands, "with houses, outhouses, and improvements," which suggests that
the tract was his manor plantation.

143. Chowan County Deeds, Bk. H-1, 94-8.

144. Granville to Corbin and James Innes, 15 Nov. 1751, Granville to Corbin
and Wheatley, 18 Apr. 1756, Granville District Papers.

145. Granville to Corbin and Innes, 15 Nov. 1751, Granville District Papers.

146. Granville to Corbin and Wheatley, 18 Apr. 1756, Granville District Papers.

147. Chowan County Deeds, Bk. H-1, 99-100.

148. Elizabeth Vann Moore researched the Edenton property sales; the examples
cited are from Chowan County Deed Book G-1, p. 113, and Book H-1,
pages 4, 78. The Geddy information was provided by Patricia Gibbs of
Colonial Williamsburg; the 1756 exchange rate for North Carolina and
the 1760 rate for Virginia are from tables in McCusker, Money and
Exchange. Sauthier, 1769 Plan of Edenton.

149. Moore, Cupola House Report, 9-10.

150. Price, "Men of Good Estates," 71-82.

151. Granville to Corbin and Wheatley, 8 Aug. 1754, Granville District Papers.

152. Powell, N. C. Biography, 1:315-16.

153. Colonial Court Records, Estates Papers, Jean Corbin folder.

154. Saunders, Colonial Records, 6:979.

155. Minutes of the Vestry for St. Paul's Church, microfilm copy, N. C. State
Archives; Clement Hall, A Collection of Many Christian Experiences, ed.
William S. Powell (Raleigh, N. C: State Department of Archives and
History, 1961), 12-15. See also Edgar L. Pennington, The Church of
England and the Reverend Clement Hall in Colonial North Carolina
(Hartfield, Conn: Church Missions Publishing Co., 1937).

156. Saunders, Colonial Records, 4:925; Hall, Christian Experiences, 12-15.

157. Corbin to Granville, 13 Feb. 1754, 19 Mar. 1754, Granville District
Papers.

158. Ibid., 13 Apr. 1754.

159. New Hanover County Deeds, Bk. E, 88-94. Colonel James Innes
(1700-1759) was born in Cannisbay, Caithness, Scotland, and apparently
came to North Carolina with Gabriel Johnston in 1734. He distinquished
himself as the commander of the colonial forces during the French and
Indian War, and he served as Corbin's co-agent from 1751-4.

160. Sc\\z-w, Journal of a Lady , 157.

161. New Hanover County Deeds, Bk. E, 88-94; Colonial Court Records, Jean
Corbin folder.

162. New Hanover County Deeds, Bk. E, 91.

163. Ibtd., 92.

164. Corbin regularly attended the meetings of the Edenton District Superior
Court during these years, and he was an associate justice of the court from
1763-5. Minutes of the Edenton District Superior Court, 1760-82, N. C.
State Archives.

54 MESDA

165. Schdi'^N, Journal of a Liidy, 171.

166. Minutes of the Chowan County Court of Common Pleas and Quarter
Sessions, 1766-72, pages not numbered, microfilm copy, N. C. State
Archives, hereafter cited as Chowan C. C. P.

167. Ibid.

168. Virginia Gazette. 11 Aug. 1768.

169. Account of the Sales of the Estate of Frances Corbin, 20 Sept. 1768, xerox.
Historic Edenton Visitors Center — Thomas Barker House, Edenton.

170. Parramore, Cradle of the Colony, 22-30.

171. Colonial Court Records, Estates Papers, Jean Corbin folder. The Chowan
County tax lists for the early 1770s list the carriage ("4 wheels") as well.
Chowan County tax lists, 1770-9, N. C. State Archives.

172. Colonial Court Records, Estates Papers, Francis Corbin folder; Chowan
C. C. P., 1766-72, Edenton Superior Court Minutes, 1760-82.

173. Colonial Court Records, Estates Papers, Francis Corbin folder.

174. Chowan County Wills (original), Robert Cashaw folder. Robert Kirshaw's
written name appears in many forms throughout the Chowan County
Records, including Kershaw, Carshaw, and Cashaw.

175. Edenton Superior Court Minutes, 1760-82, 74-5. The court minutes read
"Jury Impaneled & Sworn say the deft, hath paid L388. 14 and all/interest
to 31st May 1770. Residue unpaid, deft, hath not fully adm."

176. Chowan County Deeds, Bk. Q-1, 11-16.

177. New Hanover County Deeds, Bk. E, 88-94. Mrs. Corbin was buried
between the graves of her two husbands. Point Pleasant was destroyed
by fire in 1783. Sch-iv,', Journal of a Lady. 171.

178. Chowan County Deeds, Bk. R-1, 41-2. Very little is known about Edmund
Corbin. He described himself as a "Merchant of the Cape Fear." As he
was a loyalist, he probably sold the Cupola House to avoid its confiscation;
in 1780 he petitioned the assembly in protest of the confiscation acts.
Apparently he left North Carolina shortly thereafter, for in 1783 Thomas
Craike of Wilmington became the Corbin estate administrator. Clark,
State Records. 15:203-4; New Hanover Court Mmutes, 1771-85, 96, 109.

179. Chowan County Deeds, Bk. R-1, 41-2.

May, 1989 55

Figure 1. Cupola House, front (south) elevation. MESDA research file (MRF)
S-13J60. All MESDA photographs of the Cupola House are from this research
file and were taken by John Bivtns. All other illustrations shown here, including
interior views and radiographs, are of the Cupola House unless otherwise noted.

56

MESDA

The Cupola House:

An Anachronism of Style and Technology

John Bivins

James Melchor

Marilyn Melchor

Richard Parsons

The accurate analysis of any cultural object as a document
of chronology, style, and technology places a special burden upon
the individuals who undertake such a study. Evaluating the
evidence provided by such an object requires an understanding
of the experience of the artisan and his patron rather than just
the experience of the modern scholar. The products of some trades
are particularly difficult to probe, especially when they must be
taken as a single example with few or no comparative samples
available. Early buildings are one of these, and the problem is
compounded by the complexity of the building trade itself. In
an urban or densely-populated environment, it is possible to
establish a comparative catalog of details shared by a group of
structures survivmg from a specific time frame. In the absence
of an urban setting or regional school of architecture of a given
period, determining the date of construction and stylistic
antecedents of a dwelling can be difficult.

The Cupola House, in the architectural sense, is considered
to be North Carolina's most significant early frame dwelling. Its
presentation to the public, therefore, should be as accurate as
possible, since education must deal with the truth as we perceive
it. Nevertheless, the interpretation of this structure has suffered
due to the controversy surrounding it. Many individuals have
insisted that the interiors were added by Francis Corbin after 1756,
as we have seen, while others have disagreed. Others have
suggested that the building represents an alteration of an earlier

May, 1989 57

building in terms of both structure and form, and that the cupola
itself, for example, is a later addition. The dwelling repeatedly
has been compared with New England regional antecedents.
Waterman remarked that the house represents "one of the most
striking essays in the Jacobean style in America," and that "there
is no more important example of Jacobean design south of
Connecticut than the Cupola House, except Bacon's Castle in
Surry County, Virginia. "•

Actually, the Cupola House is in many respects an architec-
tural anomaly that cannot be explained by a simple comparison
with dwellings standing outside the North Carolina Albemarle.
Aligning the house with the "Jacobean" style is inadequate from
more than one viewpoint. Frame houses with jettied or overshot
second stories pre-dated the reign of even James I by at least two
centuries. In America, they are represented by a number of seven-
teenth century examples with framed overhangs, and scores of
others dating through the eighteenth century with hewn
overhangs. The Cupola House has the deep jetty of early con-
struction, but the extension was provided by very unconventional
means, as we shall see. The only other details that the North
Carolina building might seem to share with the New England
buildings are the gable on the front elevation and the use of
shaped brackets under the soffit of the jetty. New England houses
with full framed jetties generally were constructed with casement
windows of small size, and shaped drops that either were part
of the upper corner posts or attached to them with mortise-and-
tenon joints. They usually have a central chimney plan with a
small entry.

In contrast, the Cupola House has guillotine sash, no drops
under the soffit of the overhang, a plan based upon a central
hall with exterior end chimneys, and it is graced with an impos-
ing cupola of classical form. These, along with a number of other
details, dissasociate the building from the mainstream of seven-
teenth and early eighteenth century building convention in the
northeast. Clear architectural precedents for the Cupola House,
in fact, are elusive, and for that reason the building must be
understood within its own geographic context insofar as possi-
ble. In short, it would be a mistake to consider the house as a
Carolina translation of a New England or even a British form.
As Parsons has stated it, the authors have made the attempt to
"lay aside all existing information and theses and examine the
house as a newly-discovered" object. It was considered an

58 MESDA

erroneous approach to enter the investigation in attempt to
"prove" any existing preconception about the house. Neverthless,
important questions sought answers, such as whether or not the
basic structure is an integral unit built at once, or, instead, conceals
an earlier, simpler building. A particularly important puzzle was
whether or not the decorative woodwork was added to the
building, and, if so, by whom.

Figure 2. First floor plan. Courtesy of Mills Lane, illustrated on page 16 of Niills
Lane. Architecture of the Old South: North Carolina {Savannah. Ga.: Beehive
Press. 1985).

The Cupola House is a double-pile two-story-with-attic frame
structure that is asymmetrical in both plan and every elevation,
a pragmatic application that stands in contrast to the classical sense
of ordered symmetry typical of Palladian dwellings of the lower
Chesapeake. This asymmetry is one of the strongest statements
of the basic vernacular nature of the building. Indeed, its double-
pile plan is the only feature that might be said to be advanced
for its time in North Carolina, since most frame buildings
remained a single room deep until the beginning of the
Neoclassical period. The double plan can be found in some of
the early dwellings of eastern Virginia.

May, 1989

59

In the Cupola House, a commodious central passage is flanked
on both west and east by two rooms of varying size (fig. 2). The
principal room is the fully-paneled southeast hall, popularly
known as the ' 'dining room; ' ' its finish includes a massive arched
cupboard (fig. 54) in the north wall, suggesting that possible use.
The presence of such a cupboard, however, does not serve to
document the fixed use of a room, particularly in an early struc-
ture. Approximately sixteen feet wide by twenty feet deep, the
hall adjoins a small unheated chamber on the northeast side that
is only eight feet deep. On the west side of the passage is a smaller
room, generally known now as the parlor, that, although not fully
paneled, nevertheless is very well detailed. Approximately fifteen
feet wide by sixteen feet deep, the parlor adjoins an 11 1/2-foot-
deep chamber on the north. The chimney that serves this room
as well as the interior finish of the space represents what appears
to be an early nineteenth century alteration to the structure.

Figure 3- South and east elevations from the southeast.

60

MESDA

The second-floor plan is much the same as the first floor,
although the southern rooms naturally are deeper than the first-
floor rooms due to the second-floor jetty. As on the first floor,
there is a fully-paneled room on the southeast, and an unheated
chamber on the northeast, a smaller heated bedchamber on the
southwest, and a room on the northwest that has a later fireplace
and Neoclassical finish (fig. 8). This later trim extends to the
architraves of the door leading from the southwest room into the
northwest chamber, indicating the probability that the door was
cut through the wall at the time that the northwest room received
its present finish.

Investigation of the Cupola House was undertaken by the
authors over a two-day period in February, 1989, and was based
upon both visual examination as well as X-ray radiography. Two
of the authors, J. Melchor and Bivins, returned for further inves-
tigation and photography on independent trips in April and May
of 1989 respectively. The analysis of the structure itself largely
was drawn from what could be seen without the aid of any instru-
ment, and revealed beyond the reasonable doubt of the authors
that all three dimensions of the framing of the house were con-
structed at one time, from the foundation footprint to the peak
of the cupola roof. An examination of the entire crawl-space by
J. Melchor proved the foundation to be continuous under all
interior partitions and exterior walls. The plan of both the first
and second floors, then, follow the plan of the foundation, with
two parallel interior foundation walls extending from front to rear
(south to north) under the house, and corresponding with the
passage partitions; other foundations provide load-bearing support
for east-west framed partitions above, but they are not bonded
to the north-south masonry. Of the visible or exterior portions
of the foundation, however, only the first and second courses of
the surface are original. The upper courses have been relaid in
Flemish bond at an indeterminate date, whereas the original facing
was English bond that matched the original chimney bases, a bond
typical of the foundations of southern houses dating before the
mid-eighteenth century. The interior foundations were con-
structed of sandal or place-bricks, that is, low-fired bricks, and
show no evidence of ever having been exposed to the weather.
No traces of earlier but now unused foundations or chimney bases
were found under the house. This establishes the present double-
pile, central-hall plan of the house as contiguous. A similar
investigation of the framing of the building was undertaken, and

May, 1989 61

the frame indeed has proven to be very significant in regard to
estabUshing the contiguity of all of the building's fabric as well
as revealing surprising and unique technological applications. The
impact of this evidence is tied with the architectural form and
plan of the house, and therefore both should be considered
together.

# 1

Figure 4. West elevation from the southwest. The north chimney on the west
side of the house was a later addition, made by either Samuel Dickinson or
Nathaniel Bond.

The asymmetry of the Cupola House is not a feature that has
been examined to any extent in the past. It is by no means unusual
for a building that is essentially Baroque in stance to provide a
balanced front facade while yielding to pragmatically uneven
fenestration at the sides and rear, but in this instance the building

62

MESDA

violates even the order of its front. The porch, front gable or pedi-
ment, and cupola are oriented on the same vertical plane, but
the front door and second-floor passage window are well off-center
to the east (fig. 1). Like many features of the Cupola House, the
asymmetry of both the front and rear elevations represents a
vernacular and even naive solution to a problem. As Parsons

"^ "T

' — e»

1

(: '-'l

Figure 3. Rear or north elevation.

observes, this irregularity very well may represent the impact of
the stair placement upon the location of the doors. The staircase
has numerous stylistic parallels in British work. That the front
and rear exterior doors of the house are off-center suggests that
the size and location of the stair was determined before the door
posts were joined to the frame. The width of one run of the stair

May, 1989

63

is approximately one-third the width of the stair passage, and
therefore the two front-to-rear runs ascending to the second floor
effectively make use of two- thirds of the rear wall of the passage
(fig. 43). The remaining space permitted the installation of a
generous rear door opening only by shifting the door to the east,
thereby avoiding the turn of the stair. Since axial planning was
of considerable importance in formal style, it was similarly
necessary to shift the front door off center in order to place it
upon the axis of the rear, thereby preserving the vista through
two open doors. This further necessitated movement of the
second-floor passage window on the front of the house, but the
huge sixteen-over-twelve-light stair window at the rear was
centered in the stair passage (fig. 5) in frank admission that the
rear facade was considered to have less importance.

Although the staircase is a handsome piece of work, study
of the balustrade reveals that it was not drawn out to scale and
possible problems were not solved before work was begun. The
stair seems to have been constructed a run at a time, with each
new problem of ramp and easing resolved differently. The visual
result is an imposing feature that seems to be crammed into an
insufficient space; particularly clumsy is the location of the
northeast chamber door partially above the second run of the stair.
Similar problems of doors opening "onto thin air" are paralleled
in more sophisticated dwellings, however. Two Virginia examples
are the Tebbs house (now gone) in Dumfries and Menokin in
Richmond County. ^ According to Waterman, the original plans
for these high style houses included such doors in their original
plans; they were not added after the houses were built. Such
relatively unsuccessful solutions to use of space, then, certainly
need not imply a later alteration to a structure.

The asymmetry of the exterior of the Cupola House is equally
evident on both its east and west elevations. The impressive
Flemish-bond chimneys are centered upon the rooms that they
heat rather than being arranged on a common axis and in the
center of the end walls. This again is a vernacular solution wherein
the plan has regulated the arrangement of the exterior. That is,
the irregular size and placement of the rooms has dictated chimney
placement. A more advanced application might have been a more
equal division of rooms and the use of corner fireplaces, but even
the use of such massive exterior chimneys on an early two- story
building in the lower Chesapeake is not common; most such
chimneys are enclosed within the structure. A parallel in this

64 MESDA

regard, however, is Tuckahoe in Goochland County, Virginia,
the early all-frame portion of which presumably was constructed
ca. 1720-30, judging from the fact that the stair carving in
Rosewell in Gloucester County was executed by the same
anonymous carver about 1725-26.3 As noted earlier, the north
chimney on the west side of the Cupola House (fig. 4) was added
at an undetermined date in the early nineteenth century, either
by Samuel Dickinson, who died in 1802, or Nathaniel Bond
(1781-1855), who married Dickinson's daughter Penelope in
1809.

(Join polite

Ordc

Figure 6. Plate XXXV I from the 1748 edition of William Salmon's Palladio
Londinensis.

The exterior doors of the house are a prominent architectural
feature that, due to the paneling plan, is often compared with
later editions of Salmon's Palladio Londinensts (fig. 6), which
was first issued in 1734; that particular edition contained no eleva-
tions of doors. There are other early buildings, including
Tuckahoe, that have doors with astral or curved panels in the lower
sections. The same paneling occurs on the wainscot-constructed

May, 1989

65

furniture of the Eastern Shore of Virginia.'^ Such decorative work
is not a derivation of classical architecture, but rather shows
influence stemming from the strapwork designs of the Mannerist
and Baroque periods. One of the most important applications
of such designs was the plan of formal garden parterres, as Marilyn
Melchor has pointed out. One seventeenth century English
engraving (fig. 7) reveals that such designs were widely known
long before Salmon published his first set of plates for doorways.
A similar parterre plan was published in Sebastio Serlo's Book
of Architecture in 1611, a London edition of the Italian work.

Figure 7. I. Kip, engraver, Rycott in the County of Oxford one of the Seats of the Rt. Honorable
Montague Earle of Abingdon Baron Norreys of Rycott, London, 1690; an astral plan for a garden
is shown at the left of the manor house. Photograph courtesy of Colonial Willtamsburg
Foundation, accession 1967-335.

Aside from the very early and imposing form of the building's
overhang, the cupola that has given the house its name certainly
may be considered the most significant architectural feature of
the building. It is, in fact, the most classical element of the
dwelling's exterior. There is every evidence that the smooth
rustication of the siding above the base is original. The ceiling
joists project on the exterior, and are finished off underneath with

66

MESDA

carved acanthus leaves much in the fashion of modilHons.

In the New England genre of jettied two-story dwellings, such
a cupola would seem an anachronism, therefore suggesting to
some that it may have been a later alteration of the building.
However, public buildings in the South and elsewhere made
extensive use of "lanterns. ' ' Mann Page had incorporated a pair
of them into the roof structure of his residence, Rosewell, and
first-quarter eighteenth century buildings in Williamsburg such
as the Governor's Palace certainly could have provided the
stimulus for the residential use of a cupola in the Albemarle. There
are other American precedents for residential cupolas in the early
eighteenth century, even though evidently none survive. For
example, in 1728 Godfrey Malbone built a large two-and-one-
half-story gambrel on Thames Street in Newport, Rhode Island.
A prominent cupola and what appears to be a balustraded gallery
on this house appears in a 1740 sketch of the city. These features
parallel the 1739 Colony House in Newport, an important
Baroque building attributed to Richard Munday. In England, a
1693 three- story house with jettied upper stories in Bury St.
Edmunds, Suffolk, has a stylish cupola set at the juncture of the
main block of the house and a rear ell. The arched heads of the
windows in this example, combined with pilasters at the corners
of the octagon and a full entablature above, show all of the detail
that might be expected of the most formal public buildings.^ In
every instance, including its use in Edenton, cupolas probably
were intended more as an impressive and formal architectural
statement than as a structure intended merely for practical use
such as keeping watch for sails far out on the sound or sea.

The lantern of the Cupola House is integrated into the roof
framing itself, which close examination has proven to represent
original construction. Four massive trusses with their principal
rafters, girts or tie beams, collars and braces bridge the upper
portion of the house frame (fig. 8). The tie beams in turn are
joined together by a plate that may be notched under the tie
beams; the exact joinery could not be determined visually, nor
is it known whether the plates are continuous beams as normal.
The tie beams and plates are supported by full-height corner posts;
story posts are set at the corners of the central passages. Between
the story posts and the corner posts are posts that are but a single
story in height due to the overhang; these evidently are positioned
between the first and second-story windows, at least on the south
or front of the building. The principal rafters of the trusses are

May, 1989 67

Brace"

Principal

End Girt Rafter

or Tie Beam „

Common

Rafter

Corner Post

Ky

Story Post

Principal Girt
False Girt

Bracket

Figure 8. Partial framing schematic by Richard Parsons; finished art by Ron Rice.

connected by two heavy full-length medial purlins that appear
to be one piece, although it is possible that some form of scarf
joint is concealed over one of the principal rafters. The purlins
are notched into the principal rafters, and are further strengthened
by diagonal bracing between the trusses and the purlins. The prin-
cipal rafters also are fitted with collar beams, in all demonstrating
in both weight of framing and the degree of bracing a tradition
of "over-building" that is often characteristic of frames con-
structed in the seventeenth century and earlier. Such overbuilding,
however, is a feature that must be used with caution in establishing
a reliable date for any structure, and in the Cupola House may
simply indicate nothing more than naivete on the part of the
joiner. Other details of the joinery tend to verify this. Another
feature of the roof framing that cannot be used to provide specific

68

MESDA

dating are the surface finishes of purhns, principal and common
rafters, collar beams, and bracing; all of this material shows the
kerfs of pitsawing. When a water-powered reciprocal saw was
available, it often was neither good economics or even
workmanlike to cut such timbers to dimension by hand. Pitsawn
material virtually disappears from North Carolina Albemarle fur-
niture by the early 1730s, but it appears evident that pitsawn
material may be found much later in tidewater houses. This may
simply represent the employment of inexpensive slave labor.

Situated between the central pair of principal rafters and above
the principal purlins are a secondary pair of short, braced purlins
cut to the same sectional dimensions as the principal purlins. This
short pair of beams serves to support the four principal posts that
establish the front and rear faces of the cupola; the remaining
four posts are tied to the center pair of principal rafters. These
short purlins, and the framing above them, is consistent with the
finish and joinery of all of the roof framing. Although the entire
roof system is without question soundly constructed, very naive
solutions in the completion of the frame nevertheless are amply
evident. The principal rafters are placed over the end and story
posts of the frame, for example, which is a proper method of
arranging load-bearing elements. The tie-beams upon which the
principal rafters rest, however, project beyond the posts and plate
of the frame. On the front of the house the principal rafters, in
fact, are planted in from the ends of the tie beams by exactly
the amount of the second-floor overhang. Further, the principal
purlins are not flush with the top surfaces of the principal rafters,
but instead project above them, thereby causing the common
rafters to be thrown out to the axis of the projecting portion of
the tie- beams. In order to accommodate this unusual structure,
a false "plate" composed of both heavy boards and individual
blocks was joined to the upper surface of the projections of the
front tie beams in order to provide a seat for the common rafter
butts. This shimming was not necessary on the north side. This
also necessitated allowing the ends of the plates to project at each
end of the building so that a common rafter could be placed out-
board of the principal rafters at each gable. In other words, the
common rafters do not have the same pitch as the principal rafters
due to the fact that the purlins are not flush with or below the
top surfaces of the principal rafters. The roof lathing, then, is
nailed to the common rafters and does not engage the principal
rafters. This strange construction is not known by the authors to

May, 1989 69

have other parallels, and indicates a probable ignorance of several
aspects of conventional roof framing by the joiner. Certainly con-
tiguous with the roof structure is the cupola framing, which, even
though it reveals a better solution in construction, could not have
been installed without completely dismantling the upper works
of the house. There is no evidence of secondary alteration
anywhere in the knockhead closets of the attic with the excep-
tion of repairs to the front gable.

Figure 9- Brackels and jettied second floor from the southeast.

Like the jettied second floor of the Cupola House, the framed
gable on the south elevation suggests a much earlier architectural
tradition. By the early eighteenth century, the fully-developed
classical pediment typical of the Palladian style was the norm in
the Chesapeake South. Front gables abound on seventeenth
century New England structures, of course, and in most instances
occur in pairs rather than as a single gable. One exception to this
is evidence found in a late seventeenth century house at 21
Linnaean Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts; the dwelling was

70

MESDA

enlarged in the early eighteenth century, and the facade gable
removed.*^

The front gable of the Cupola House retains its original ridge
beam which is joined to the principal purlin on the south face
of the roof, but there is extensive nineteenth and twentieth century
repair to the structure. The truss forming the pitch of the gable
is original, although scabbed out with modern material due to
insect damage. The rafters are replaced except for two documen-
tary fragments that have been saved. The framing of the exterior
face is largely undisturbed, with all of the framed and sheathed
surround for the oculus intact. The oculus itself is a modern
replacement, very likely at least the third unit placed in the
opening. The ca. 1918 view (fig. 22) shows a similar single- light
unit, but it is more likely that the original was divided into
quadrants in a muUioned frame. Nail hole evidence indicates that
all of the oculi that occupied the gable at various periods were
simply held in place with nails driven into the surround at an
angle. Like other architectural elements that separate the Cupola
House from conventional American seventeenth century struc-
tures, the oculus is not a detail normally associated with gables,
but rather is a common feature of fully-developed pediments.

On the exterior of the front gable, the rakeboards, crown,
and finish at the boxed cornice of the roof eaves are replacements
of indeterminate date. Among the replacements that appear to
have taken place during the nineteenth century is the finial with
the initials "FC" and "17/58" applied to it. This feature, which
long has served as an apparent document of Francis Corbin's
residence in the house, will be discussed later in conjunction with
other exterior decorative details. Like all of the attic except for
the storage areas behind the knee walls, the interior of the gable
was treated as a finished space, with its flooring contiguous with
the adjacent attic passage. The interior of the gable was fully
plastered down to a simple base that was run with a flush bead,
the same base used in the two attic chambers and passage.

On more conventional eighteenth century buildings, tie beams
and end girts that project over the front and rear plates provide
eave overhangs as well as serve as nailers for a box cornice. In
normal parlance, both principal and common rafters rest upon
these projections, but as we have seen, only the common rafters
do so on the Cupola House. This, of course, is not apparent from
the exterior, so a normal boxed cornice may be observed. Also
projecting beyond the frame are the ends of the plates, although

May, 1989 71

those on the west side of the building have been removed, prob-
ably due to weathering. This is an old-fashioned convention that
permitted a footing for the support of outboard common rafters
that formed extended eaves on each gable. The precedents for
this are quite ancient, for even the seventeenth century frame
houses of New England tend to have gable eaves that are virtually
flush with the siding, the roofing projecting very little over the
rakes much in the manner that was common later. There are
exceptions, such as the 1637 Fairbanks House in Dedham,
Massachusetts. Ever deeper gable eaves are evident on British
buildings of earlier date. One such example illustrated by Abbott
Cummings in his exceptional book Framed Houses of
Massachusetts Bay, a circa 1600 farmhouse in Banham, Norfolk,
has eave projections that surely must approach a foot in depth. ^
The reason for such great depth of eaving was the protection of
exposed stucco between the half-timbered frames of earlier
buildings, but such projections were hardly necessary on a weather-
boarded dwelling. The Norfolk house illustrated in Cummings
also reveals the ends of purlins that extend the full depth of the
eave, providing further support for the outboard common rafter
and the rake boards that constitute the finish for the outside edges
of the eaves. The exceptional depth of the Cupola House eaves
is an interesting comparison with such British prototypes, for in
this, as well as the exposed and carved plate ends and a similar
exposure and decoration of the purlins, we find details that seem
to be related to British construction of the late sixteenth century
and much earlier. Nevertheless, the presence of these details is
not proof that the builder had come from an isolated British shire
where such post-medieval details were retained until much later,
especially in view of the strange solutions made elsewhere in the
framing. The employment of finials on the roof ridge at the out-
side edge of the eaves also would appear to be a pre-seventeenth
century device. Presumably these were mortised into the ridge
beam, but it seems very unlikely that the present finials on the
house could have survived the ravages of two-and-a-half centuries
of weather. Nevertheless, they also appear on the 1918 view of
the house.

The growing puzzle of an assembled group of architectural
details and construction methodology that appears to defy direct
comparison with other models is considerably heightened by an
examination of the second-floor jetty of the house. Next to the
cupola, the overhang is the building's most prominent feature.

72 MESDA

Though no other examples of jettied buildings are known to
survive in the South, the building practice must have been known.
This is suggested in a surprismgly late eastern North Carolina court
document of 1725 entitled "The Justices of Curratuck v. Peyton."
In the suit, the justices of the Currituck precinct court, among
whom was Joseph Sanderson, Richard Sanderson's brother, took
action against the joiner, Robert Peyton, who in April 1723 "did
agree ... to build for the said precinct a Courthouse of thirty
feet in length eighteen feet in width with a fashionable overjet
framed Worke Standing on Cedar Blocks . . . with sash win-
dows. . . . "^ We might well wonder if Richard Sanderson indeed
was familiar with "overjet framed Worke" in his native Currituck,
where such things evidently were still considered "fashionable."
However, that possibility must be considered entirely conjectural,
particularly in view of the fact that Peyton had not constructed
the courthouse by 1725, when it was demanded that his bond
of £l40 be forfeited.

Noted earlier is the fact that jettied New England houses were
constructed by two methods. The earlier form had actually begun
to disappear by the early seventeenth century in Britain, and saw
a surprising rebirth in New England after mid-century. ^ In this
application, the first floor corner posts rise only to the end girt
or horizontal beam situated at the second-floor level. The end
girts project over the first-floor posts, and the second-floor posts
are then mortised-and-tenoned to the projections of the girts,
thereby forming the overhang (fig. 10). This construction per-
sisted to the first decade of the eighteenth century in New
England, but rapidly gave way to the later form of attenuated
jetty which was not achieved by a framed overhang. Instead of
allowing the end girts to project, the front girt was simply hewn
into an L-shaped section, thereby providing a shallow jetty four
to six inches deep, much in contrast with the ten to twelve inches
or more of soffit obtainable in a framed jetty. The hewn overhang
persisted through the eighteenth century in some areas of New
England, representing something of a vestigial remains of an
earlier and more robust style.

On the exterior, the deep jetty of the Cupola House suggests
a framed overhang. The actual construction, however, was found
to have nothing to do with known British or New England framing
traditions. Rather than having two tiers of corner and story posts,
the Cupola House has single, one-piece posts that rise from the
sills to the plates, with the exception of the paired single-story

May, 1989 73

Chimney

V

Front
Girt

E-'^t

Chimney
Girt

End Girt

Principal Rafter

Common Rafter

False Plate

Plate

/

Principal Girt

False Girt

Rivets

Corner Post

Figure 10. Elevations of framing plans for jettied second stones. Left to right:
New England. 17th century; New England, 18th century; the Cupola House.
Technical art by Ron Rice, with the details of the Cupola House false girt and
brackets provided by James Me Ichor.

posts that are really no more than heavy studs. From the second-
floor level to the plates, the posts are twice their first-floor depth
(figs. 8, 14). This dimensional change in the posts allows the upper
level of the posts to project well over the lower halves. The posts
are apparently joined conventionally with a series of girts mortised-
and-tenoned to the posts, although this joinery could not be
verified visually. In front of these principal or joined girts is a

74

MESDA

false girt (fig. 13) running the length of the house that is joined
to the principal girts with large iron rivets approximately 1 1/4"
in diameter. On the outside face of the false girts, the rivets are
set into counterbores (fig. 12). They are not situated over the
posts; from the apparent spacing, at least five and as many as
seven of these rivets attach the false girt to the house frame. This
construction was discovered only by virtue of the fact that rotted
siding above the jetty had been removed from the house during
the course of winter repairs, making two of the rivets visible, one
of them well below the surface due to rot of the false girt.

Figiof 11. ]ettied second floor construction revealed by removed weather
boarding, southeast corner.

Counterbore

Rivet

Principal
Girt

Figure 12. Section through the false and pnncipal girts. Technical art by Ron
Rice, based upon a representation by James Melchor.

May, 1989

75

■iwjpifflfpipil

^m^

Figure 13- Exposed fa/se girt, east side of south elevation; the hole in the girt
above the right side of the window is the counterbore for a rivet.

Further supporting the false girt and its attendant framing
above arc four heavy brackets under the soffit of the jetty (figs.
9, 11). Like the false girt, the brackets proved to be attached to
the frame with heavy rivets (fig. 15); the plugs covering the rivet
heads are visible on the exterior. These rivets pierce the corner
posts and the one-story posts between the windows. The nature
of supports for the girt, if any, on each side of the door is unknown
since that area is hidden by the rear columns and roof of the porch.
On a jettied building, a porch appears to be a visual anomaly.
The existing feature has a crown mold in front identical to later
crown molds under the gable eaves of the roof, but other molding
details appear to match similar treatment inside the house. The
porch appears to date from the eighteenth century, but it deserves
further study.

The dummied girt and its attendant brackets, then, appear
to be an ad hoc solution to providing a jettied second floor. The
brackets themselves are classical in form, resembling inverted,
giant bed molds consisting of an ovolo, fillet, and cyma. Brackets
may be found at the gables of New England dwellings, but they
are ornamental rather than load-bearing; on the 1683 Capen house
in Topsfield, Massachusetts, the brackets are tenoned into the
plates. They were sawn to the profile of a bolection molding;
similar brackets ornamented the gables of the 1680 Old Feather
Store (now gone) in Boston as well as the 1685-90 Andrews house
in Hingham, Massachusetts.'" The 1650-60 Cowles house and the
Gleason house of the same date, both in Farmington, Connec-
ticut, have large ornamental brackets under the soffit of the jetties.

76

MESDA

Figure 14. Radiograph 23 of the corner post, southwest corner, with the source locate J in
the second-floor southwest chamber and angled slightly down. The film for this radiograph
was placed outside the house, its lower 17" side horizontally aligned with the lower edge
of the bottom weatherboard of the second floor. Superimposed on the film are wrought
nails, the horizontal grain and shadow of the baseboard at the bottom, the floor (lower
right), the horizontal shadows of plaster lath (containing the small wrought nail nght of
center top), the vertical grain of the corner post, the false girt (the rectangular shadow in
the lower center of the film), and the honzontal grain and shadow of weatherboards (the
large wrought nail at upper left is a siding nail). An examination of the radiograph resulted
in the conclusion that the first floor (a) corner post is shouldered over the false girt and
presumably continues in this one-piece double depth the full height of the second floor
(b). The false girt is approximately 9" deep, matching the depth of the bracket tops (see
fig. 15), and is about 6 3/4" in height.

May, 1989

77

CUPOL

2 2(

i4

Figure 15. Radiograph 24 of the top rivet of the bracket located between the
windows of the first floor southeast room. The source of the radiograph was
the east side of the bracket; the film was placed on the west side. The iron
rivet is approximately 1 1 /4" in diameter; the upset or peened head is fitted
into a counterbore that is plugged on the exterior. The console is approximately
9" deep at the top. A modern wire nail below the nvet represents a repair.

In both instances, the brackets were placed on each side of the
door and at the corner posts, and both are cut with the profile
of two astragals with an extra pair of fillets; the upper astragal
is roughly twice the size of the lower. '^ There is nothing to suggest
that they are load-bearing.

The concept of riveted framing members is foreign to con-
ventional building practice. Aside from the usual fasteners, archi-
tectural hardware, and an occasional forged strap used to prevent
the separation of highly stressed frames, '^ house joiners normally
did not employ iron for any frame construction. The jetty of the
Cupola House, in fact, appears to be significantly related to ship
construction. As Parsons has noted, if the Cupola House were
destroyed by a hurricane, leaving the bottom of the overhang
beached in Pembroke Creek, we probably would mistake it for
the keel of a ship. Such comparisons can hardly be considered
glib when the construction is compared with the rotted keel and
rudder post (fig. 16) of a sloop or schooner that may be seen in
the public park on Union Point in New Bern. In a ship, the stem,
keel, stern, frames, knees, and other hull members required either
massive rivets or large trunnels (wooden pins) for joinery, since,
like the Cupola House girt, many were laminated structures that
could not be held together by common joinery. In that sense,
even the brackets of the Cupola House jetty are not unlike ship's

78 MESDA

knees. We must not conclude from this that the artisan who built
the Cupola House frame was without question trained as a ship-
wright, but the allusion is compelling, especially in view of other
aspects of the house frame that are either naive or unconventional.
In port towns like Edenton, most woodworkers enjoyed a signifi-
cant amount of maritime employment. Cabinetmakers, for
example, commonly fashioned blocks of all sizes, as well as
repinning and resheaving old ones, and they also made ship's
pumps and fitted out cabin interiors., It would not have been
unusual for a house carpenter to fashion either ship's knees or
the corner posts of a dwelling. Conversely, it is equally possible
that a ship carpenter might have tried his hand at a house frame.
Since both house joinery and shipbuilding were largely specialized
trades, an artisan trained in one field was likely to reveal a certain
amount of ignorance when called upon to execute a job in the
allied field.

Figure 16. Rivets joining the keel laminates from a sloop or schooner, probably
nineteenth century, Union Point, New Bern, N.C. MRF S- 14,302.

May, 1989

79

Figure 1 7. Radiographers preparing equipment for an exposure through the
west or passage wall of the second floor southeast chamber.

The X-ray radiography used to examine the construction of
the house actually had been intended for study of the interior
woodwork. The visual discovery of the riveted construction simply
made the presence of the unit a bonus to the study. The equip-
ment and technicians were supplied by ATEC Associates, Inc.,
an Indianapolis-based firm with an office in Norfolk. The equip-
ment consisted of an Amersham 660 gamma ray emitter charged
with 48 curies of radioactive Iridium 192 as a source; this device
was used to expose high speed DuPont NDT 75 film. Exposure
times were 45 seconds for interior walls, 60 seconds for exterior
walls, and 75 seconds for the radiograph of the exterior bracket.
The radiographers were Brett Clarke and Mike Johnson; 24
exposures were made, all but two on 14" X 17" sheet film. A
report detailing the position of each exposure was provided by
ATEC, and J. Melchor undertook a painstaking analysis of each
film, providing a written report of each.

The X-ray radiographic examination of old buildings is not
a new science, but it is infrequently employed due to the expense.
A day's work at the Cupola House, for example, cost MESDA
$1,230. Such analysis must be considered inexpensive, however,
when examination by any other means would be destructive. X-ray
therefore is a powerful ally of the preservationist. Restoration
architect David McLaren Hart of Massachusetts has used

80 MESDA

radiography for similar applications for some time, and provides
a succinct description of how it works:

Very simply, x-rays are a form of high energy electro-
magnetic radiation. . . . When a beam of x-rays is
transmitted through any heterogeneous object, it is
differentially absorbed, depending upon the thickness,
density, and chemical composition of the object. The less
dense portion of an object, for instance, allows a greater
proportion of the radiation to pass through than the more
dense. The image registered by the emergent rays on a
film that is placed adjacent to the object constitutes a
shadowgraph, or radiograph, of the object's interior. X-rays
are able to penetrate most materials used in building con-
struction, but with varying facility. Wood and conventional
plaster are penetrated easily: masonry, earth, and some
metals, on the other hand, are highly absorbent of x-
rays. . . J^

The post-medieval appearance of certain aspects of the Cupola
House framing are visibly evident on the interior of the dwell-
ing. Most particularly, the heavy corner and story posts of the
house are exposed wherever the walls of a room were plastered,
including the first floor passage and southwest room or parlor
and the second floor passage (fig. 18) and southwest bedchamber.
When the original first-floor rooms of the Cupola House were
installed in the Brooklyn Museum, the installations omitted the
appearance of exposed posts, allowing cornices and chair-rails to
mitre in the corners in normal fashion rather than either abutting
the posts as in the passages or fitting around them, as they origi-
nally were treated in the parlor (fig. 56).^^

During the eighteenth century, it was common practice to
hew out the interior portions of large square or rectangular posts,
leaving them in an "L" shaped section, in order to avoid their
intrusion into a room. The tedious hewing allowed either plaster
lath or paneling to be fitted into the space provided. Earlier,
however, framing was not only left full-section and allowed to
show in room corners, but was often run with decorative moldings
or chamfers. The builder of the Cupola House chose a
workmanlike solution to the problem of finishing and decorating
the edge of the posts simply by casing them off on the inside
with boards run with a robust flush-bead, certainly an easier task

May, 1989 81

Figure 18. Exposed story post, southwest corner of the second-floor passage.

than planing posts cither before or after they were assembled.
Some forty miles south of Edenton, in the tiny port of Bath on
the Pamlico River, a French-born merchant, Michael Coutanche,
built a two- story frame house ca. 1739-44 that is still standing,
and known as the Palmer-Marsh house (fig. 19)- This dwelling
also has posts that are exposed on the interior (fig. 20), but in
this instance the exposed surfaces of the posts are finish-planed
and then run with a flush bead. Except for its massive English-
bond double chimney that incorporates lighted closets or cup-
boards, the Palmer-Marsh house is a far more conventional struc-
ture than the Cupola House, and its exposed framing represents

82

MESDA

Figure 19. Palmer-Marsh House. 1739-44. Bath. N. C. MRF S- 14.303.

Figure 20. First floor southeast room, Palmer-Marsh House; an exposed corner
post is located at the right of the window. MRF S- 14, 503-

May, 1989

83

a vernacular solution to a framing problem rather than one
retardataire application among many that is characteristic of the
Edenton structure. There are other examples of similar exposed
framing elsewhere in the Carolina Coastal Plain. One relatively
late example is 6 Church Street in Wilmington, a large, nicely-
detailed coastal cottage with a full basement, and probably con-
structed about 1790 even though it has an earlier appearance in
elevation and architectural detail. The posts of 6 Church Street,
like the Cupola House, are sheathed and molded.

The most significant clue regarding the entire continuity of
the Cupola House it lies in the decorative carving of both exterior
and interior elements, for they are inextricably tied in regard to
style and execution. Of the decorative exterior elements, perhaps
the most problematical has been the finial of the front gable (fig.
23). Noted earlier was the fact that this finial, along with its flank-
ing rakes, was replaced at some indeterminate date before 1918.
The face of the finial bears the initials "FC" and the date "1758,"
the year in which Corbin is thought to have completed whatever
renovation to the house he may have performed. The initials
themselves, as Waterman noted, "are applied and not carved
upon the finial . " ' ^ Due to the absence of any visible weathering
of the initials, in fact, it is not unreasonable to assume that they
are not wood at all, but another material such as sheet lead, and
simply tacked in place. The rather crude execution of both letters
and figures offers no concrete stylistic evidence of age, so we do
not know whether they graced an earlier finial or not. Fortunately,
however, the abiding historical interest that the Bond family felt
for the house brought about the preservation of the house's
original finial (figs. 24, 25), which long has lain in the attic. It
seems doubtful that Corbin, had he replaced the finial himself,
would have bothered to save a rotted and badly weathered
original. In any event, the present unit attached to the house
utilizes neither the style nor the joinery of the original, which
is larger and far more elaborate than the present unit.

The original finial is pierced with a large vertical mortise that
originally engaged a tenon on the end of the ridge beam of the
gable. Although it has not been verified, the present finial does
not appear to be attached with such a joint. The heavy weather-
ing pattern of the original, in combination with the damp rot
that appears to have occurred under something applied on the
surface, suggests that the original rake boards of the gable very
likely passed over the front face of the finial, joining in a mitre

84 MESDA

b s

d

♦«^

Figure 21. Radiugruph 1 uj the story post, southwest corner of the first-floor
passage. The film was placed in the passage and the source in the southwest
room or parlor. The bottom of the radiograph is at chair rail level. The radiograph
shows a furring strip (a) nailed to the post with wrought nails about 2" long
(b). The lathing (c) is nailed to both sides of the furring strip with wrought
nails (d), indicating that when the woodwork of the parlor and passage were
removed by the Brooklyn Museum, the original plaster and lath was left largely
undisturbed. The presence of wire nails (e) in this image indicate the new facings
on the corner posts and a new chair rail both installed during the 1960s
restoration.

May, 1989

85

? Bl

.' n ■

11

~1

4l

11

T

■ 1

1

,; 1

1

-_.

'.«!

Figure 22. The south elevation from the southwest as it appeared circa 1918.
Photograph courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum.

in the center and thereby covering the mortise-and-tenon joint.
Angled cuts in the face of the finial also suggest this, but the
amount of weathering is too severe to provide concrete evidence.
The upper portion of the finial was sawn to shape in a peaked
spire that projected further above the ridge than the later unit.
There is nothing left to prove or disprove that initials or a date
of any sort were ever attached to this finial, but if indeed the
rakes did cross the face, then it seems less likely that anything
other than the rakes were applied to the surface unless it was in
the upper part of the finial, which is substantially rotted. Whether
or not the initials on the present finial, then, were ever applied
to the original is not possible to determine. It is possible that
the "FC/ 17/58" was indeed nailed to the original finial, and
that the Bonds preserved the letters and affixed them to the later
finial. It is equally possible, however, that the Bonds had the
initials and date made and added to the new finial simply to
commemorate the history of the house. This puzzle may never
be solved.

86

MESDA

Figure 25. Finial. marked "FC/ 17/ 38, " front gable. This finial is a pre-1918
replacement of the onginal (see fig. 24).

More important to the examination at hand is the console-
hke carving of the lower part of the old finial. Since the scroll
at the bottom is not integrated with the lower edge of the finial,
it seems possible that the finial rested upon an exterior collar beam
fitted across the soffit of the gable. Whatever the arrangement
might have been, the carving itself is very significant. A close
examination of the carver's style and technique reveal beyond
any doubt that the same hand executed the other exterior carv-
ing still surviving on the building. The finial carving generally

May, 1989

87

Figure 24. Original front gable finial. The vertical mortise received a tenon
cut on the end of the gable ridge beam.

88

MESDA

Figure 23. Detail of the carving at the bottom of the original finial.

is well-drawn, but the flat, unmodeled quality of the leaves and
simple, heavy-handed veiner shading is relatively naive. The
shaping of the leaves, which in the typical carver's tradition was
effected with vertical setting-in or straight-down cuts with gouges,
shows the repeated application of only two radii of gouges. This
degree of repetition of cuts with the same tools indicates that
the carver's tool kit seems to have been a limited one.

May, 1989

89

Figure 26. Carved plate end, southeast corner, from the southeast.

I

%

^?^

/

.V-

^

/

. aj-

Figure 27. Detail of the southeast plate end, from the northeast.

4^

%

90

MESDA

In addition to the early finial, other carved elements on the
house include the surviving plate ends (figs. 26, 27) on the east
side, the exposed ends of the purlins on both the east (figs. 29,
30) and west (fig. 31) sides, and the ends of the ceiling joists
of the cupola (figs. 32, 33). Since the plates are covered, it was
not possible to determine whether their exposed ends were cut
from the solid beams or applied with a mortise-and- tenon joint.
Similarly, the ceiling plaster of the cupola prevents an inspec-
tion of the ceiling joists. An examination of these modillion-like
joist ends, however, reveals that several are not square with the
external faces of the cupola (fig. 32), and one modillion on the
north side is notched on top to accommodate a soffit board that
may have warped before the modillion was installed. It is also
possible that this evidence indicates warping of timbers, workman-
ship that was not equal to the installation of an elaborate con-
verging joist system, as well as later repairs, so any evidence of
whether the cupola joist ends are actually part of the joists
themselves is inconclusive.

Figure 28. Southwest comer. The plates do not project on the west side,
indicating that the projections had been datnaged and possibly removed before
the installation of the present crown mold under the gable eaves.

The pair of heavy principal purlins of the roof, however, is
another matter. Investigation from both inside the knockhead
attics of the garret as well as examination of the top of the
southeast purlin with roofing and roof sheathing removed indi-
cates that the exposed ends of three of the four purlins are integral
with the beams themselves.'*^ Only the northeast purlin end

May, 1989

91

Figure 29- Exposed end of the southeast principal purlin, from the east.

apparently is an integral portion of the beam was the northeast
unit. The southeast purlin is notched half its depth to engage
the principal rafter at that point. On the west side of the house,
the purlins were notched a full three-quarters of their depth for
the same purpose. This deep notching resulted in a partial destruc-
tion of the purlin ends due to splitting along the end grain. The
small amount of stock that retained the west purlin ends was not
sufficient to prevent half of the southwest purlin end from
splitting away (fig. 31), and a third of the northwest unit (fig.
31). As noted earlier, a double ogee-with-fillet crown molding
was added later under all the eaves, abutting the shear faces of
the broken purlins on the west; this same molding was used under
the gable of the porch roof.

A substantial overburden of paint partially obliterates the
carving under the purlin ends, but since they were protected from
heavy weathering by the extended eaves, the essential nature of
the shaping and modeling of the acanthus leafage is evident. This
includes the limited number of gouges used for setting-in the
profiles of the leaves, the flat modeling, and the simple, heavy
veining that converges upon a thick, tapering central spine of

92

MESDA

the leaves. All of these details are consistent not only with the
original finial carving, but that of the plate ends and cupola ceiling
joist tips as well. The work was all executed by the same carver.
Particularly significant is the fact that the purlin ends with the
one noted possible exception, and very likely the plate ends as
well, would have been sawn to shape and carved before the
timbers were set in place. Any other solution would have been

V

Figure 30. Detail of the southeast principal purlin.

May, 1989

93

unworkmanlike, for it would have taken a carver with grim deter-
mination and either elaborate scaffolding or the physical attributes
of a simian to shape and carve the bottom surfaces of the large
beams after they had been joined to the roof framing. The con-
tiguity of the exterior carving with the beams that it ornaments,
at least in the instance of the purlins, therefore provides us with

i<-«— .o-

■-•»__.- *i>

.^•"N,^^

•3;;

f-.

-^

■SW-.

/

\

N#^'

'^'''Sr

Figure 31- Exposed end of the southwest pnnctpal purlin, from the west garret
window. The northern half of the purlin end is sheared off.

94

MESDA

important evidence about the contiguity of the entire structure.
The chain of carving and construction Hnks the plan, frame, roof
structure, cupola, and all of the interior finish, for the carver who
executed the exterior decoration of the Cupola House also created
all of the carving on both floors of the interior.

ft ^

Figure 32. Carved ceiling jont ends under the soffit of the cupola roof. One
of these ends is crooked, indicating poor installation, later warpage. or the
possibility that the modillion-like joist ends are separate pieces.

The original carving remaining in the house today consists
of the chimneypieces in the southeast and southwest second-floor
chambers and the brackets or spandrels of the stair. As noted
earlier, the balance of the first floor woodwork is an excellent
replica based upon the original woodwork now installed in
Brooklyn. The original carving on both floors of the house, like
that on the exterior, is relatively elaborate but not necessarily well-
detailed. The work, although it could not be classified as crude,
certainly reveals the hand of a carver not trained in urban architec-
tural carving. Instead, his style is antiquated, a vernacular
extension of the English Baroque style of the late seventeenth
century. A comparison with other American architectural carv-
ing of the first half of the eighteenth century has yielded no strong
parallels. The style of the Cupola House work has something of
the rather flat, stonecarver's-like quality of the large appliques
in Drayton Hall, built in the late 1730s near Charleston, South
Carolina. However, the design sources for the Drayton decora-

May, 1989

95

ft-***

Figure 33. Detail of the carved acanthus on one of the cupola joist ends.

%

MESDA

tion are known, and the carving, if not wholly urban quality,
is more competently drawn and better-detailed than the Cupola
House decoration. The latter has more of the quality of maritime
carving, which often depended upon a polychrome finish to pro-
vide carved details with greater boldness. Such a comparison is
hardly adequate, however, since there is very little American ships'
carving like that ornamenting transoms, trailboards, and billet
heads, that survives from even as early as the late eighteenth
century.

The essentially Baroque nature of all the interior carving is
nowhere more evident than that in the second floor rooms. All
of the interior carving shows the use of the same tool sweeps and
techniques used on the exterior, including the flat quality of
modeling and simple, heavy veining converging on the central
spines of the acanthus leaves. The result, especially on the
elongated consoles of the two second-floor overmantels (figs. 35,
37), is very repetitive. None of the interior work is as deeply
relieved as the exterior carving, showing the carver's understanding
that decoration that was to be installed far above the viewer's
level required greater boldness in order to be seen at all. Carving
inside the rooms obviously did not carry the same visual require-
ment, and therefore needed less relief at its edges.

The second floor overmantel consoles are not only Baroque,
but almost pre-Baroque or Mannerist in both form and execu-
tion. In classical architecture, consoles were intended to give the
appearance of supporting architectural members above them, and
therefore in this instance they are placed just below the overmantel
pediments. In neither case, however, do these consoles have the
appearance of anything other than applied ornament. Their pro-
files are too flat for their height so that they do not project suffi-
ciently, and the severe, squared plinths below them are naive.
In the southeast chamber the upper portions of the consoles are
allowed to die under the lower crown mold of the pediment (fig.

Each of the four original fireplaces in the house shows a later
alteration. In their initial configuration, the fireboxes had con-
siderable depth and width, especially on the first floor, where
the fireboxes have been returned to their early form during the
restoration work of the 1960s. Although dramatic in appearance,
the great size of the original fireplaces certainly must have caused
a considerable degree of inefficiency, with much of the warm air
in the room rushing up the cavernous flues. By the late eigh-

May, 1989 97

Figure 54. Chimney piece, second floor southeast chamber.

98

MESDA

Figure 35. Detail of an overmantel console, second floor southeast chamber.

May, 1989

99

Figure 36. Chimney piece, second floor southwest chamber.

100

MESDA

'::^*^

Figure 37- Detail of an overmantel console, second floor southwest chamber.

May, 1989

101

teenth century, it was well known that smaller fireboxes of a
different plan served far better for heating; theories for proper
fireplace design were published in England by Count Rumford.
Both of the second floor fireplaces were "Rumfordized" at an
indeterminate date with shallow sloping backs, constricted throats
and smoke shelves, sharply-splayed sides, and lowered arches. All
of the original arches on both floors were segmental, and now
are flat. These alterations required that the fireplace surrounds
be reworked in order to better relate to the lowered arches. The
moldings used for the mantel architraves on the second floor
match those of the Neoclassical woodwork of the northwest
chamber (fig. 38), indicating the probability that the fireboxes
were altered at the time that the northwest chimney was added.
However, the jambs of the first floor southeast room, or hall,
were fitted with a marble facing (fig. 50) of a style that began
appearing in the Southeast by the 1750s. This facing was smaller
than the firebox, and concealed the segmental arch that is still
in place. Just when this facing was added, then, is subject to
question, but the alteration was earlier than that of the second-
floor fireplaces.

The alteration of the second floor mantels is evident upon
examination of the firebox surrounds. In the fully-paneled
southeast chamber, the crossetted architrave of the mantel (fig.
34) has either been reduced in both height and width or simply
replaced altogether. Evidence of that possibility lies in an
apparently identical ovolo backhand on the Neoclassical mantel
(fig. 38) in the northwest chamber. Whatever the form of the
original backhand molding, it was spaced further from the firebox
than the present ovolo. If it was a crossetted backhand, then the
crossettes extended to the fillets of the panel stiles on each side
of the fireplace. This seems indicated by the short section of
pieced-in chair rail just below the crossettes, yet the room bases
are not similarly pieced, suggesting that they are replacements
dating from the mantel alteration. The original segmental arch
is preserved behind the present mantel fascia approximately eight
inches above the present splayed arch, indicating that the posi-
tion of the upper backhand molding was lowered at least 5 1 / 2 " .

The southwest chamber shows similar alteration to the mantel
woodwork (fig. 36). In this instance, the entire architrave
surrounding the firebox clearly is a Neoclassical replacement, since
it has the same molding configuration of the door casings of the
northwest chamber. The lower flat arch of the fireplace

102 MESDA

Figure 38. Mantel, second floor northwest chamber. Photograph courtesy of
the Brooklyn Museum.

necessitated the wide fascia under the upper architrave. Evidence
of the original fireplace arch is missing in this room, but it
presumably was an exposed segmental arch like the others. Chair-
rail piecing also has taken place in this room, indicating the
possibility that the mantel shelf and the torus below it have been
reduced in width, which is a possibility since the shelf in the
southeast chamber is the same width as the pediment above.
Without the complete removal of paint and even some of the
overmantel elements, it is difficult to determine just how the

May, 1989

103

Figure 39- Radiograph 4 of the baseboard of the west or passage wall of the second floor
southeast chamber; the source was in the passage, the film in the chamber. The exposure
was made at a position 29 inches south of the passage door frame. Plaster debris (a) up to
6 3/4" deep is seen at the bottom; the short wrought nails with heads attach the plaster
lath (b); slimmer, apparently headless spngs driven into the stud (c) attach the chamber
paneling. A mortise and tenon Joint (d), with its pin, just above inch iJ, is part of the
framing of the chamber paneling. Three empty nail holes in this four-inch stud indicate
from their regular spacing that the chamber probably originally was sheathed and then
paneled.

104

MESDA

Figure 40. Radiograph 19 of a stud in the west wall of the second floor southeast char?iber.
33 "south of the passage door. The source was in the passage, and the film in the chamber.
This radiograph is part of a vertical series of exposures of this stud, beginning at 14" above
the floor and continuing to the ceiling. This particular exposure represents inches 33. 42.
and 47 above the floor. The film reveals paneling and lath secured to the stud with wrought
nails {a): empty naU holes at 2 3/8". 6 3/8". 9 7/8". 11 3/4". and 13 3/8" (two (b)
of these are clearly visible above and below inch 41): repairs (c) to a cracked panel made
with wire nails are visible.

May, 1989

105

southwest chimneypiece was altered. There is nothing to suggest
that its original appearance, other than a different mantel
architrave and perhaps a wider shelf and torus, was markedly
different than what we see now.

The alteration of the fireboxes and surrounding woodwork
on the second floor appears to have taken place early in the nine-
teenth century. Evidence of a much earlier alteration to the entire
finish of the southeast chamber, however, was revealed both by
visual inspection and X-ray. During the course of examining the
upper framing of the house where rotted siding had been
removed, it was found that the wall studs of the second floor
southeast chamber have been spliced with lapped scarf joints
approximately ten inches in length. X-ray analysis shows that these
scarfs are fastened with wooden pins (fig. 4l). The lower part
of the studs as well as the spliced section are both pit-sawn. The
paneling of this room is not attached directly to the studs and
braces, but rather to furring strips nailed across the studs with
wrought nails, as the X-rays reveal (fig. 40). Since there is a space
between the studs and the back of the paneling, the inside faces
of the studs could be studied. It was found that these faces were
filled with broken nails and empty nail holes, both of which could
be viewed with a mirror.

It is difficult to understand the reason for the pieced-out studs.
Their joinery and surface finish appear to indicate that this alter-
ation took place during the construction of the house, possibly
due to an error on the part of the joiner. They actually were cut
approximately four inches too short. The studs are mortised into
the false girt (fig. 13), but it would have seemed simpler to make
and fit new studs rather than lengthening them. However, other
anomalies in the framing also strongly suggest both ignorance
and errors, so the possible stud errors and consequent alterations
are in keeping with some of the strange framing practices seen
elsewhere, particularly in the roof. Two studs were observed to
have numbering that does not correspond with any known frame
numbering, suggesting that during the course of splicing them
out, the studs were moved about or were even spliced with sal-
vaged material. X-ray analysis showed no such anomalies with
the studding of the southwest chamber.

The nail holes inside the southeast chamber studs extend the
full height of the studs, indicating that something was attached
to them, including the scarfed upper portions. This was verified
by a series of X-rays extending the height of one stud in the west

106 MESDA

\

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/ „. ...

CUfOLA H0U9E

m ii

w

Figure 41. Radiograph 10 of the stud east of the west window in the south
or exterior wall of the second floor southeast chamber. The source was in the
chamber; the film was located on the exterior at the base of the stud. Paneling
details are clear in this example; the furring strip is indicated only by the larger
wrought nail (a) near the top which attaches it to the stud; the smaller slit or
T-head finish nail (b) at the top attaches the paneling to the furring strip. The
scarf joint is evident here only by the presence of a trunnel or wooden pin (c)
at right center of the radiograph. Horizontal cracks (d) in the paneling also
can be seen. Empty holes (e) and a broken nail (f are also apparent.

May, 1989

107

or passage wall of the room (fig. 40). The vertical spacing of the
nail holes suggests the former presence of horizontal sheathing.
The average spacing between the holes on the one stud is approx-
imately 4 1/2", but spacing varied between a minimum of two
and a maximum of nine inches. It is clear that these nail holes
had nothing to do with plaster lath such as those applied to the
studs of the southwest chamber (fig. 42), which retains its original
wall finish. A lath requires a relatively uniform, close spacing of
2-2 1/2". Further, plaster lines remain on studs even after lath
and plaster is removed, and there is no evidence of this in the
southeast chamber.

Both visual inspection and X-ray indicate that most of the
nail holes in the studs are empty. This indicates the probability
that the nails were pulled out of the studs soon after they were
driven in, for the tannic acid in ring-porous wood (the studs appear
to be oak or ash, but no microanalysis was made) cause nails to
rust fast very quickly. Wrought-iron nails break off easily. This
appears to indicate that the owner very likely changed his mind
regarding the finish of the room during the course of construc-
tion of the house. The change from what may have been sheathing
to the present paneling may well have taken place even before
the second-floor passage walls were plastered, since there is a good
deal of plaster debris behind the base of the passage partition
(fig. 39), most of which probably represents excess material
troweled through the lath beyond what was needed for a good
key. Had the passage been plastered before the installation of
paneling in the southeast chamber, the plaster debris would have
had to be removed since it would have fallen into the room in
a talus, preventing the installation of bases without prior removal
of the debris.

It appears, then, that the wall finish of the southeast chamber
was changed during the course of construction, very likely from
sheathing similar to the vertical beaded boards backing the
chimneypiece in the southwest chamber, but mounted horizon-
tally. Removal of such a wall finish and replacement with fielded
paneling provided a second-floor room with much of the formality
of the first floor hall below it. Such shifts during construction
are not unusual in the least, for a number of other early buildings
have revealed similar evidence. Such things could be taken as
evidence that a building had been upgraded, but we have already
seen that the mantel carving of this room was executed by the
same artisan that carved portions of the exterior frame. Had the

108 MESDA

"^^

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\

Figure 42. Radiograph 13 of the baseboard of the east or passage wall of the second floor
southwest chamber; the source was located in the passage, and the film in the chamber.
The exposure was taken 41 inches south of the passage door frame. This exposure is part
of a series taken of the chamber base. Visible are extensive plaster debris (a) in the wall
pocket, roughly 10 1/2" deep, probably associated with electrical work; lath and baseboards
are nailed to both sides of the stud at inch 41 (b). A wire nail in the stud is visible 10 3/8"
above the floor, along with metal lath along the left edge of the stud (c), both indicating
modern repairs. There are no empty nail holes in the studs of this wall, indicating original
plaster on both sides.

May, 1989

109

chimneypiece been installed in the room before it was paneled,
it would have had to be removed before the paneling was installed,
which hardly seems plausible. The plaster debris from the hall
partition further strengthens this. Also, the garret is finished with
paneled doors and other details that are consistent with the second-
floor woodwork. If the lower stories of the house had been
upgraded at a later time, the experience of the authors indicates
that overt evidence of earlier attic detailing such as batten doors,
plain casings, and sheathing rather than plaster would have sur-
vived a later retrimming of the lower floors. This, however, is
not the case, for the finish throughout the attic is of high quality
for a Carolina attic, and no evidence was found that it has been
added. It should be noted that the fields of all the paneling in
the house, including the doors, are sunk slightly below the
surrounding stiles and rails. In the northeast, this is often
understood to be a later detail, since most raised paneling in pre-
Revolutionary buildings of the middle and northern states has
fields that rise above the frames. There are, no doubt, excep-
tions to this rule in the north. Exceptions certainly occur in the
south; in the MESDA collection is a northeastern North Carolina
desk-and-bookcase of 1720-35 with dramatic arched-head panels
with fields sunk well below the frames.^''

Figure 43- Staircase, north end of the first-floor passage, after the 1960s restoration.
Photograph courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum.

110

MESDA

Figure 44. Second-floor staircase landing, showing the stringer and brackets of the third
run.

The stairs of the Cupola House were part of the woodwork
that was not removed after the 1918 sale of the interiors, but
examination of the balustrade and carved brackets appears to
indicate that removal of the stairs very likely had begun.
Numerous wire nails suggest re-attachment of the elements, not
just later repairs. Alterations to the stair had already taken place
before 1918, however, for at the time that the Brooklyn Museum
was in the process of removing the woodwork, the curtail or volute
of the bottom tread was largely missing. As a result of this, the
replica stair installed at Brooklyn has a straight run to the floor.
On the original stair, the bottom step itself is a baulk of solid
timber, and enough of its curtail remained to guide its reconstruc-

May, 1989

111

tion during the 1960s restoration of the house (fig. 43). The
handrail was reconstructed with a ramp based upon surviving
mortises, in addition to using the existing ramps and newels as
precedent. Interestingly, portions of the handrail are of mahogany,
while other pieces are made of yellow pine. A limited amount
of mahogany was available in the Albemarle certainly as early
as the 1720s, for it begins to occur in southeastern Virginia
furniture by that time.

Figure 45. Detail of the brackets of the third run of the stair.

112

MESDA

Figure 46. First-floor southeast hall chimneyptece as installed in the Brooklyn Museum.
Photograph courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum.

The S-shaped stair brackets (fig. 45) of the Cupola House
basically are a flat version of a console turned on its side. The
pattern is a familiar one, illustrated with numerous variations in
eighteenth century English architectural books. A slightly smaller
version of the same device is employed as flat consoles at each
side of the parlor overmantel (fig. 46), but without the flower
inside the upper volute. Both the stair brackets and the overmantel
consoles have stemmed flowers trailing from the lower volute.

May, 1989

113

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^^*^^ H M

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Figure 47. Detail of the first-floor hall chimneyptece and south window architrave
as installed in the Brooklyn Museum. Photograph courtesy of the Brooklyn
Museum.

114

MESDA

a standard late Baroque motif. These are quite flat, with no
modeling other than rounded edges, and all of the flowers are
simply veined in the same manner. The flowers used in these
appliques are the most successful elements of the carving. Even
more robust are the eight flowers set into the arched spandrels
of the hall overmantel. Here the carver alternated the outer petals
with small points, five on each flower, providing much the
appearance of a Tudor rose.

The fully-carved entablature of the hall, coupled with the
carved elements of the chimneypiece, result in an impressive archi-
tectural display. The boldest elements are the flowers ornamenting
the overmantel panels and the modillions of the pitch pediment,
each a miniature version of the carved plate and purlin ends on
the exterior of the building. The scale of the woodwork in this
room seems to overcome the available space, and indeed the pedi-
ment actually intrudes into the plaster of the ceiling. The crown
of the pediment, however, was not cut at ceiling height; instead,
the plaster buries it slightly. This is also true of the pitch pedi-
ment of the overmantel of the southeast chamber directly over
the hall. The somewhat awkward installation of these pediments
has suggested proof to some that the interiors were added and
simply crammed into the available space as necessary. In a sense,
the slightly overscaled woodwork of this room repeats the archi-
tectural anomalies of the stair installation. Like the stair, the
chimneypiece of the hall shows something of a lack of prior
planning. The classical tenets of dynamic proportion demanded
a certain height that the pediment needed to attain in relation
to its width, so the huge size of the fireplace caused the joiner
to draw a chimneypiece that did not quite fit the room. The
somewhat "squashed" effect that resulted is rather charmmg m
a vernacular sense, but offers no proof of anything other than
to corroborate other stylistic aberrations already discussed. The
nature of this chimneypiece caused Waterman to compare it with
the mid-eighteenth century Old Brick House (fig. 48) near
Elizabeth City in Pasquotank County, a bit less than thirty miles
northeast of Edenton. Actually a brick-ended frame house, the
Old Brick house had a fine parlor now enlarged and installed
in a private residence in Delaware. The "curious and individual
overmantel," as Waterman surmised, "relates Old Brick House
to the Cupola House. "'^ Actually, the overmantel, shown here
in its original state (fig. 49), is a direct adaptation of a door head
from Plate CCCXXV, Vol. 2, of Batty Langley's Ancient Masonry

May, 1989 115

Figure 48. The Old Brick House, 1750-63, near Elizabeth City in Pasquotank
County, N.C. HABS photograph by Thomas T. Waterman, 1940; reproduced
from the collection of the Library of Congress.

Figure 49- Parlor chimneypiece in situ, the OldBnck House. Photograph from
a private collection.

116

MESDA

of 1736, a very rare instance where an early North Carolina house
borrowed from a published design source. Interestingly, Langley
credits a much earlier architect for the design with the inscrip-
tion "By Michael Angelo." The same design was included in Plate
74 of Langley 's 1741 Builder's Jewel. ^"^ Although quite a wonder-
ful conceit, there is nothing to indicate any tie between this
chimneypiece and the interiors of the Cupola House.

It has been suggested that the chimneypiece of the hall was
taken from Plate H (fig. 51) of the 1748 third edition of William
Salmon's often-cited Palladio Londinensis, and indeed there are
similarities. There is no doubt that Salmon's work was both widely
circulated and assiduously studied by eighteenth century builders.
It is also true that Salmon in turn had carefully studied the work
of his predecessors, including Andrea Palladio and Inigo Jones.
Like many British architectural books, or any design books for
that matter, the various editions of Salmon basically present
combinations of standard classical designs. The 1734 first edition
oi Palladio Londinensis illustrates no elevations of chimneypieces;
these plates were added to later editions. Caution should be
observed in attributing a design to any plate, unless it is patently
an exact copy of a specific plate as in the use of the Langley door-
head design for the Old Brick house overmantel. This may be
proven readily by making a comparative examination of the
available architectural books of the period. That Salmon was
simply followmg the mainstream of fashion, for example, is
evident in the engraved elevations for a room designed by Colen
Campbell and illustrated in Plate 100 of the 1725 Volume III
of Vitruvius Britannicus (fig. 52). Like the plate in Salmon,
Campbell's chimneypiece is composed of a broken pitch pedi-
ment with flat consoles below. Full consoles below the mantel
shelf trail husks down the pilasters, much in the manner of the
Salmon plate. Campbell describes this plate as a section of a great
hall "of my Invention." In Plate 34 of the same book he illustrates
a section of the great hall of Houghton in Norfolk, the seat of
Robert Walpole. Campbell must have designed much of the struc-
ture of Houghton, which still stands, but William Kent was
responsible for drawing the mantel that Campbell illustrates, and
it is virtually identical to the chimneypiece in Plate 100 that
Campbell claimed as his own design.

From this, it should be readily apparent that architects freely
copied from each other, and that standard classical designs were
the part of most builders' repertoire. There is no evidence that

May, 1989 117

Figure HI CupoLi House first-floor southetist hall chimneypiece, taken in situ in 1911
Photograph courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum.

Figure 51. Plate H of William Salmon's Palladio Londonensis, third edition, 1748.

118

MESDA

Figure 32. A detail from Plate 100 from Culen Campbell. Vitruvius Britannicus.
vol. 3. London. 1723.

the joiner/and /or/carver at the Cupola House used any architec-
tural book, or indeed that he even owned one. There is every
evidence that he was well versed in the basic elements of Baroque
classicism, however, even if the carving is not urban quality, and
some of the interior detail is vernacular in nature.

Noted earlier is the fact that the marble facing of the hall
fireplace is a later addition. The original fireplace opening was
slightly wider, and the segmental arch was exposed at the top.
It is possible that this facing was installed either by Corbin or
Dickinson, and the firebox reduced in size at that time. Such
an alteration is earlier, then, than the changes made to the second
floor fireplaces. The one-piece facing illustrated here is a replica
of the original produced for the Brooklyn Museum; the original
(fig. 50) was made in three pieces, as all such facings were, but
had broken in several places. The facing of the replica chimney-
piece now in the Cupola House itself is of marbleized wood, which
seems a logical alternative to the problem of finding stone that
matched the color and figure of the original material.

The architrave of the hall mantel now in the Brooklyn Museum
may well represent woodwork that was added to accommodate
the marble facing. The inside edges of the architrave have a carved

May, 1989

119

Figure 55- North wall oj the southeast hall, taken in situ in 1918. Photograph courtesy
of the Brooklyn Museum.

'

Figure 54. North wall of the southeast hall as it is now installed m the Brooklyn Museum.
Photograph courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum.

120

MESDA

ovolo that does not relate to other carved moldings in the house,
but the authors have not been able to examine this carving other
than in photographs. The strong possibility that the architrave
was added, however, becomes evident in a comparison with the
parlor across the passage. Except for the obvious difference of the
robust Baroque broken-scrolled pediment in the southwest room
(fig. 56), the formula for the parlor chimneypiece, at least below
the pediment, is largely the same as that in the hall. The molding
sequences for the mantel shelf are very close, and both have
projecting sections at each end of the shelf, the projections resting
upon small plinths below. In the parlor, rather flat consoles trailing
a strange triangular applique carved with acanthus and husks lends
visual support to the plinths and shelf above. The acanthus carv-
ing of the consoles is closely aligned with the modillion-like joist
ends of the cupola (fig. 33), but without the heavy central spine
of the latter. In the hall, similar but slightly wider plinths rest
upon the deep cyma molding comprising the backhand of the
architrave; on the left side, the plinth does not align with the
side of the backhand (fig. 46). This could be the result of error
in the installation of the room in Brooklyn, but the presence of
consoles in the parlor, which is a lesser room, strongly suggests
that the hall also had consoles below the plinths, and an entirely
different architrave.

Like that in the hall, the fireplace of the parlor has been
reduced in size. It is probable that all of its backhand molding
as well as the paneled fascia above the fireplace is an eighteenth
century remodeling. A paneled fascia occurring inside an
architrave is a strange element even in a house that is quite
characterized by vernacular details, and the width of its panel
bevels and style of frame molding do not match the balance of
the woodwork. Like the hall, the parlor chimneypiece originally
displayed a massive segmental arch, and it is doubtful that any
material originally covered the exposed arch and jambs at the sides,
perhaps other than plaster. This is true of all the fireplaces except
for those associated with the northwest chimney.

Taken both from the historical viewpoint and as its own docu-
ment of style and technology, the Cupola House offers certain
concrete evidence while tantalizing us with questions the answers
to which remain elusive.

The history of the property must be considered alongside the
architectural evidence, and a review of the Cupola House

May, 1989 121

■ ' -i

dkM^'

Figure 5 J). Detail of the southwest parlor chimney piece as it is now installed in the Brooklyn
Museum. Photograph courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum.

122

MESDA

Figure 36. West wall of the southwest parlor, taken in situ in 1918. Photograph courtesy
of the Brooklyn Museum.

chronology derived from Bruce Cheeseman's study is appropriate.
Lot Number One of the new plan of Edenton, where the house
stands today, was purchased by Christopher Gale on 25 April 1724
for the consideration of five shillings. On 6 May of the same year,
Gale sold the property to Richard Sanderson of Currituck and
Perquimans counties for £25, one-hundred times the amount that
Gale had paid for the same property. Sanderson, a merchant
mariner who constantly plied the coastwise trade to New England,
married Gale's sister-in-law, Ruth Laker Minge, in 1726; she died
two years later. On 26 April 1726, barely two years after he had
purchased the property, Sanderson sold "Lot no. one & house"
to John Dunston for £100 sterling. Dunston, a naval officer
charged with the collection of port duties, died during the summer
ensuing. His widow, Martha Dunston, resold the "lott and
house" to Richard Sanderson on 1 August 1727, the sale price
remaining at £100 sterling. Mrs. Dunston remained in the dwell-
ing, apparently as a renter, until the summer of 1730.

On 12 November 1731 Sanderson again sold the property,
which was described as "houses outhouses & Edifices," to the
London merchant William Morton. The sale price had dropped

May, 1989

123

to "85 pounds Province Bills." Very little is known of Morton,
who apparently spent a great deal of time in England. Never-
theless, the property remained in his family until 1756. Less than
a year after he had purchased the house, on 23 August 1732,
Morton appointed John Montgomery "to sell and dispose" of
the property. This was not done. Morton retained the house, and
died in the late 1740s; in 1749 his heirs appointed Thomas Barker,
among others, to settle the estate and dispose of the property.
Barker was an attorney who came to Edenton from Massachusetts
during the 1720s.

Francis Corbin arrived in Edenton in 1750 and leased a plan-
tation near the mouth of Pembroke Creek on the west side of
town. He became Granville's sole agent in North Carolina in 1751.
On 19 April 1756 Corbin purchased the property, "containing
one- half acre & all Houses Buildings and Gardens" for £61:5:0
"Proclamation Money" from Thomas Barker, the agent of the
Morton heirs. Corbin completed construction of a wharf on the
south side of the property in 1758. He married Jean Innes in the
fall of 1761, and thereafter apparently spent most of his time
at "Point Pleasant" near Wilmington. He died in the fall of 1767,
and the contents of the Cupola House were sold the following
year. The 1769 Sauthier plan of Edenton (fig. 3 of the Cheeseman
article) shows the house situated in the center of the lot. Four
major dependencies are indicated at the rear of the house on the
north side, and two small structures, possibly gazebo-like garden
buildings on the south or street front. Upon Corbin's death, the
property reverted to his family; on 7 February 1777 Edmund
Corbin of Wilmington sold the "water lott Houses tenements
Buildings and Appurtenances" to Dr. Samuel Dickinson for £400.
Dickinson and his heirs owned the property until 1918.

The chain of ownership of Lot Number One, then, indicates
that a house of some description occupied the property from at
least 1726 until the present. During the course of five transferrals
of the property, the sale price ranged from £100 sterling to as
low as £61:5:0 province money when Corbin bought it, ascend-
ing to £400 in North Carolina currency in 1777. The Dickinson
purchase price no doubt indicates both the rampant inflation of
the early Revolutionary period as well as improvements that Corbin
had made, including the wharf. Other than the wharf, the exact
nature of Corbin's work on the property, including the house
and dependencies, is unknown. Alterations or remodeling and
repair to the house that Corbin could have carried out are the

124 MESDA

present exterior crown moldings, the first-floor hall and parlor
fireplace facings and surrounds, and possibly the present porch.
It is equally possible, however, that Samuel Dickinson effected
these changes. The carpenter, Robert Kirshaw, was awarded
£211:6:0 against the Corbin estate in May, 1772. As we have seen,
one alteration that cannot be attributed to Corbin is the finial
at the front gable of the house. The present finial appears to have
been installed at an undetermined date in the nineteenth century,
probably after 1850.

An examination of contemporary sale prices of properties, with
a particular focus upon existing structures that can be compared
with the Cupola House, has not yielded any significant conclu-
sion. It appears evident that the initial £100, while a seemingly
low figure, could have been a sum sufficient to purchase a dwelling
of the Cupola House size and quality, but that is by no means
definitive proof of anything other than the fact that a house sat
upon the lot in 1726. The most useful documentation presently
available, then, is the dwelling itself.

There is no totally concrete evidence that the Cupola House
was built by Richard Sanderson, or any other specific individual,
for that matter. As we have seen, the entire structure is a con-
tiguous unit, constructed all at once except for the later addition
of a chimney. The evidence of this contiguity, however, does not
provide us with a firm date. The building could have been con-
structed at any time between 1724 and 1756, but so broad a
chronological spread is unacceptable. An attempt to narrow the
logical date range must take into account the factors discussed
before.

Yet another consideration is the possibility that a structure
erected by Sanderson was either destroyed by a catastrophe such
as a hurricane or even razed by a later owner of the property.
If either was the case, then all visible evidence of an earlier struc-
ture was removed before the present building was erected. There
is no documentation of any destruction of a building on Lot
Number One. It is also possible that one of the dependencies
shown on the north side of the lot by Sauthier actually was a dwell-
ing that preceded the Cupola House. One of them, in fact, is
shown to be fully as large in plan as the house itself; situated
on the west property line, the building faced Broad Street, with
its long axis oriented north-south. This building, however, is
thought to have been the kitchen, and it may have combined
other functions such as a quarters and coach house. No archaeology

May, 1989 125

has determined anything about the nature of this and other
dependencies. The large unit must have been gone by 1918, for
it does not show in the photograph of that year (fig. 22). In this
picture, a painted brick building stands behind the Cupola House.
Unlike the building in the Sauthier plan, its gable end faces Broad
Street. It is not known what this building was, but it could well
represent an alteration of an earlier form. The arched window
visible on its second floor, for example, is wider than that on the
first floor. In 1759 Corbin purchased a brass lock and 10,000 bricks
from the estate of Clement Hall, material that could have been
used in the construction of a dependency. ^^ Despite the former
presence of this and other buildings of indeterminate age on the
lot, however, the Cupola House makes a strong statement for
itself as the primary structure on Lot Number One.

The house is an architectural anomaly, whether compared with
northern or southern dwellings. There are relatively few double-
pile frame houses in the tidewater South before the post- Revolu-
tionary period. No other jettied buildings are known to survive
in the coastal areas of the South. The Cupola House does not
offer a good comparison with seventeenth century New England
buildings that have deep framed second-floor overhangs. Sharply
diverging from New England convention is the central hall, end
chimney plan of the Cupola House, as well as the cupola itself,
the oculus in the front gable, the use of guillotine sash, and the
radically different construction of the jetty. The interiors of the
Cupola House, while essentially Baroque in nature, nevertheless
have details that are more modish than many urban New England
interiors that likely are one or more decades later. For example,
the use of bolection moldings where fielded panels join their
frames persisted in some New England towns to the mid-
eighteenth century. For these reasons, the house should not be
presented as a translation of northern architecture. Far preferable
would be an architectural comparison between the Cupola House
and other Albemarle or even lower Chesapeake houses, but no
significant parallels have been found. Dwellings like the Old Brick
house in Pasquotank often may suggest vernacular similarities,
but these have melted away under scrutiny over the years. It may
be that the Vernacular Architecture Group or independent
architectural historians in Britain will be able to reveal parallels
to the Cupola House at some time in the future.

The Cupola House blends details of style and construction
that are largely old-fashioned, but tempered nonetheless by a

126 MESDA

degree of sophistication sufficient to rank the building high among
American dwellings of its time. Aspects of the house that indeed
are quite vernacular, and even naive or seemingly post- medieval,
provide a dramatic foil for the classical elements that draw the
house away from a representation of nothing more than a purely
local statement. The exceptional amount of eave depth at the
gables, coupled with the projecting and decorated plates and
purlins, is one of the anachronistic aspects of the house that caused
one of the research team to characterize the house as "basically
Georgian with a number of embarrassing seventeenth century
hiccups. ' ' The eaves actually represent a spasm that is earlier than
1600. The massive framing of the house also seems to be an early
detail, but the Cupola House is not alone in seeming to have
been "over-built." German housewrights in the back country
of Carolina were well known for such practices even into the nine-
teenth century. Seldom encountered, however, is the degree of
naivete in the framing of the Cupola House roof, most particulady
in regard to the different pitch of the principal and common rafters
due to the unusual application of the purlins. One possible reason
for this discrepancy may have been the carpenter's distrust of
loading the jetty structure. Other aspects of the house framing
are equally unconventional, or even more so, as we have seen
in the method used to obtain an overshot second floor. The riveted
false girt and accompanying brackets suggest the mind of a ship-
wright at work, endeavoring to solve an unfamiliar puzzle.

The asymmetry of the facades, the roof finials, front gable,
jettied second floor, and extended eaves are all post-medieval
features upon which is transposed essentially Baroque architec-
tural language that includes the classical cupola and other exterior
finish such as moldings and the profile of the brackets under the
jetty. The house makes its closest pass to conventional architec-
ture of the eighteenth century with its excellent interiors and the
employment of guillotine sash in the windows. Nevertheless, the
interiors all represent the high Baroque classicism typical of
middling-quality urban British interiors of the last quarter of the
seventeenth century. This is evident in the Cupola House's display
of sophisticated entablatures, full-height ranges of paneling,
stopfluted pilasters, crossetted architraves, scrolled or modillioned
pitch pediments, and an elaborate stair. Even so, the spatial
application of some of these details at times reveals inadequate
solutions in interior architecture, as we have seen in the stair and
pediment of the hall overmantel. Such problems do not offer

May, 1989 127

documentation of interior remodeling or addition, however, par-
ticularly since the exterior carving that is an integral part of the
frame proves that the finish work inside the house is contem-
porary with the rest of the structure. The interior trim itself is
not derivative in the sense that the joiner can be shown to have
referred to published design sources of the period. The classical
detail employed, then, indicates a joiner — or perhaps even his
patron — possessed with a working knowledge of urban interior
architecture, and in the case of the artisan, the molding planes
needed to execute them.

Stylistically, some of the carved decoration of the interior is
earlier than the paneling, architraves, and chimneypieces. Portions
approach Mannerism in their flat, repetitive execution, suggesting
the possibility that the joiner who drew the interiors did not carve
them himself. Indeed, joinery and carving were usually separate
trades. The carver was workmanlike in his approach, but his
ornament reveals a limited number and variety of carving tools,
and his style identifies the artisan as a carver not trained in the
detail necessary for fine architectural finish. Nothing is known
of the sort of carving available to Edcntonians before the
mid-1740s, but work done by cabinetmakers there by 1750 and
into the 1760s shows a great deal more sophistication (see
Cheescman, figs. 5-8). That is not to say that the Cupola House
carver could not have been a tradesman who was brought in to
do a job, and then sailed away, leaving no other examples of his
work in the region. It seems improbable, however, that an
individual who ordered carving after 1750 would not have taken
advantage of more skilled carvers already resident in the town.
Even more improbable is that the Cupola House was built after
1750, but if the carving and other interiors indeed were executed
during that decade, then the entire house was built then. Logic,
however, provides a better conclusion: the Cupola House and its
interiors, with the exception of alterations to the first floor fireplace
surrounds and the even later Neoclassical trimming of two rooms,
has nothing to do with Francis Corbin other than the fact that
the man occupied the space. Architectural matters aside, it should
be considered unusual for a well-educated and wealthy former
Londoner like Corbin to bespeak interior appointments that would
have been deemed three- quarters of a century out of date in his
native England. Indeed, it seems that Corbin was quite conscious
of his rank and image in the colony, which is nothing unusual
for an official with such an important office.

128 MESDA

If Corbin did not build the Cupola House, then we are left
with the puzzle of who indeed was the first inhabitant. A
dendrochronological examination of the house's timbers could
be revealing if an accurate baseline sampling of tree-ring curves
for the eastern Albemarle is established. Dendrochronology, if
properly applied, can provide a very close date for when a tree
was cut, and therefore presumably when a sawn timber was put
into use. The process involves the procurement of drilled core
samples in order to study the climatological impact upon grow-
ing seasons as revealed in the tree rings. For accuracy, a number
of baseline samples are required. In the Southeast, and particularly
in the tidewater, the annual pattern of rainfall may vary widely
even within one county, and this can be a serious detriment to
the accuracy of dating timbers by this process. Trees with a root
system situated in groundwater can also show radically different
seasonal growth patterns than those on dry ground.^'

Of the survey team that examined the Cupola House, two
— Parsons and Bishir — have observed from the viewpoint of
their own personal experience that a likely date for the construc-
tion of the dwelling lies in the late 1730s or during the 1740s.
Parsons suggests that the first owner's "surface orientation"
affected everything visible, including the double plan, cupola,
and elaborate woodwork, but that his lack of knowledge in exterior
architecture left the building reliant upon vernacular building
methods for the frame and chimneys. The greatest problem faced
in this study, of course, is just what vernacular the cupola house
belongs to. It seems improbable that it is truly unique, if a view
wider than Carolina is taken, but overviews are dangerous. The
interiors suggest nothing that would make them later than well-
known first-quarter eighteenth century Virginia houses such as
Marmion or Tuckahoe. Like other Virginia houses, however, the
regional attributes of Tuckahoe's interiors are more dramatically
tempered by urban antecedents than the work of the Cupola
House, especially in regard to the carving. Nevertheless, no
architectural historian actually has been able to present evidence
that the Cupola House and its interiors could not have been
finished as early as the 1720s. ^^

With Corbin logically eliminated as the builder of the house,
we are left with Richard Sanderson, who built some sort of dwell-
ing on the property, sold it to John Dunston, and repurchased
it fourteen months later, holding title to the property for six years
in all. There is a remote possibility that Dunston had a hand in

May, 1989 129

the erection of the house described in the sale if Cheeseman's
hypothesis that the Dunstons were renting the lot prior to the
sale is correct. Such arrangements were not uncommon. William
Morton owned the property for more than fifteen years, but
occupied it sporadically; his heirs held title thereafter until 1756.
Three attorneys were appointed by the Morton heirs to dispose
of the estate; one of them, Thomas Barker, was a resident of
Edenton. It hardly seems likely that Barker had anything to do
with the construction of the building, although it is possible that
he lived there for a time. We know very little about Morton, who
certainly could have built the house. However, there is no actual
documentary research that can be correlated significantly with
the fabric of the house. From that standpoint, it is equally, if
not more likely, that Sanderson built the Cupola House as we
see it, with, of course, the exception of the Neoclassical alter-
ations. In the present absence of possible further research on either
Sanderson or Morton, then it seems plausible to support the logical
conclusion that the Cupola House was built by one of those two
individuals at some date between 1724 and about 1740. John
Dunston cannot be ruled out completely, for he had the means
and the time to complete such a dwelling; however, he is a much
less likely candidate than either Sanderson or Morton.

Whether or not the year of construction is ever reliably proven,
the Cupola House is a remarkable statement. That it reflects a
strange mixture of naive or even post-medieval concepts with more
sophisticated details, and whether the resulting potpourri of
technology and architecture is due to ignorance on the part of
an owner or builder, is almost beside the point. Within the
acknowledged limitations of our current understanding, the house
is architecturally unique in the South, and indeed even along
the entire east coast. Its pastiche of fascinating anachronisms,
coupled with the colorful history of its inhabitants, make the
Cupola House a very special place indeed.

130 MESDA

FOOTNOTES

1. Thomas Tileston Waterman, The Early Architecture of North Carolina
(Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1947), p. 29.

2. Thomas Tileston Waterman, The Mansions of Virginia. 1706-1776 (Chapel
Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1945), pp. 232, 308.

3. The date of Tuckahoe has long been considered to be earlier than this.
Waterman suggests, for example, that the building ' "was commenced shonly
after 1712" and that the brick-ended west wing was added "after 1730"
(Waterman, Mansions, p. 84). Current thinking among architectural
histonans, however, suggests a slightly later date for the eady portion, which,
like the addition, is one room deep.

4. See James R. Melchor, N. Gordon Lohr, and Marilyn S. Melchor, Eastern
Shore, Virginia Raised-Panel Furniture. i7iO-7S30 (Norfolk, the Chrysler
Museum, 1982), figs. 3, 40.

5. Antoinette F. Downing and Vincent J. Scully, Jr., The Architectural
Heritage of Newport Rhode blanch, 1640-1913 (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1952), pp. 58-9, pi. 74; Basil Oliver, Old Houses and
Village Buildings in East Anglia. Norfolk. Suffolk. & Essex (London: B.
T. Batsford, 1912), pi, LI. According to Geoffrey Beard, in England,
buildings with cupolas were usually associated with customs and customs
houses. Information courtesy Audrey H. Michie from a conversation with
Beard.

6. Robert Bell Rettig, Guide to Cambridge Architecture: Ten Vi^alking Tours
(Cambridge: Cambridge Historical Commission, 1969), no. F22.

7. Abbott Lowell Cummings, The Framed Houses of Massachusetts Bay,
1625-1723 (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1979), pp.
31, 61 (Fairbanks house); p. 9 (house in Norfolk).

8. Robert J. Cain, et al., North Carolina Higher-Court Minutes. 1724-1730
(Raleigh: The Division of Archives and History, 1981), pp. 174-5.

9. Ihid., pp. 112-14.

10. Cummings, Framed Houses, pp. 37, 136.

1 1 . J. Frederick Kelly, The Early Domestic Architecture of Connecticut (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1924), p. 63, plates IX, X.

12. The 1769 Miles Brewton house in Charleston, S. C, for example, has
massive angle irons at the corners of the upper and lower floor framing
of the double portico.

May, 1989 131

13. David McLaren Hart, "X-Ray Inspection of Historic Structures: and Aid
to dating & Structural Analysis," Technology & Conservation Magazine,
Vol. 2, No. 2, Summer 1977, p. 10; see also David M. Hart, "X-Ray
Investigation of Buildings," Bulletin of the Association for Preservation
Technology, Vol. V, No. 1, 1973, p. 9; David M. Hart, "X-Ray Analysis
of the Narbonne House," Bulletin of the APT, Vol. VI, No. 1, 1974, p.
78; Mary Joan Kevlin, "Radiographic Inspection of Plank-House Con-
struction," Bulletin oftheAPTY, Vol. XVIII, No. 3, 1986. Ms. Kevlin
details the use of a portable unit of the sort used by veterinarians, and
her study suggests that the use of such a device may be less expensive than
a gamma ray emitter.

14. For excellent view of the current installation of the rooms in the Brooklyn
Museum, see Donald C. Pierce and Hope Alswang, American Interiors:
New England & the South (Brooklyn: The Brooklyn Museum, 1983),
particularly pp. 44, 48.

15. Waterman, North Carolina, p. 29.

16. Telephone conversation between Bivins and Peter Sandbeck of the
Preservation Section, Division of Archives and History, Raleigh, May, 1989;
Sandbeck supervised the re-roofmg and other repairs of the building during
February and March, 1989.

17. John Bivins, Jr., The Furniture of Coastal North Carolina, 1700-1820
(Wmston-Salem: The Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, 1988),
p. 139, fig. 5.55.

18. Waterman, North Carolina, p. 29.

19. This plate is illustrated on p. 34 of Mills Lane, Architecture of the Old
South: North Carolina (Savannah: The Beehive Press, 1985).

20. Estate Sale of Clement Hall, Box 45, Chowan County Estate Records, 1759,
North Carolina Archives. Information courtesy of James C. Jordan III.

21. Rainer Berger, Veronika Giertz, and Walter Horn, Can German Tree-Ring
Curves be Applied in France and England?," Vernacular Architecture, Vols.
1 and 2 (York, England: The Vernacular Architecture Group, 1970), p. 4.

22. Abbott Lowell Cummings has made the observation that there is "no reason
why the [Cupola] house couldn't be from the 1720s," based upon his
examination of published views of the dwelling. Mr. Cummings also
confirmed the futility of comparing early northeastern architecture with
that of the South, where, as he further observes, prevailing British trends
often were embraced earlier than in the North. Telephone conversation
with Bivins, 24 May 1989.

132 MESDA

May, 1989

133

MESDA seeks manuscripts which treat virtually any facet of southern decorative
art for publication in the JOURNAL. The MESDA staff would also like to
examine any privately-held primary research material (documents and manu-
scripts) from the South, and southern newspapers published in 1820 and earlier.

Some back issues of the Journal
are available.

The preparation of x\\t Journal ^2S made possible (in part) by a grant from
the Research Tools and Reference Works Program of the National Endowment
for the Humanities, an independent Federal Agency.

Photographs in this issue by the staff of the Museum of Early Southern
Decorative Arts except where noted.

134 MESDA

MUSEUM OF EARLY SOUTHERN DECORATIVE ARTS

Forsyth Alexander, Editorial Associate

Nancy Bean, Office Manager

John Bivins, Jr., Editor/Director of Publications

Sally Gant, Director of Education and Special Events

Paula Hooper, Education Assistant /Membership Coordinator

Frank L. Horton, Director Ementus

Madelyn Moeller, Administrator

Elizabeth Putney, Associate in Education

Bradford Rauschenberg, Director of Research

Martha Rowe, Research Associate

Wesley Stewart, Photographer